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The University of Chicago Publications 
IN Religious Education 

EDITED BY 

ERNEST D. BURTON SHAILER MATHEWS 

THEODORE G. SOARES 



HANDBOOKS OF ETHICS AND RELIGION 



THE STORY OF THE NEW 
TESTAMENT 



THE UNIVEESITY OF CHIOAGO PRESS 
CHICAGO, LLIilNOIS 



Bgent0 

THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 

SEW TOEK 

THE CUNNINGHAM, CURTISS & WELCH COMPANY 



THE CAMBRIDGE UNITEKSITY PRESS 

LOHDON AND EDIBBUBSH 

THE UfARTTTTPTW-KARTTPHna-gATSTTA 
TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO 

THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY 

SHAKSEAI 

KARL W, HIERSEMANN 

LEIFZIS 



THE 

STORY OF THE NEW 

TESTAMENT 



By 
EDGAR J. 9OODSPEED 

Professor of Biblical and Patristic Greek in 
The University of Chicago 




THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 






Copyright iqiS By 
The University of Chicago 



All Rights Reserved 



Published May 1916 




Composed and Printed By 

The University of Chicago Press 

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. 



MAY 29 1916 
©CU433186 

''IM I 



INTRODUCTION 

It must always be remembered that Christianity 
did not spring from the New Testament but the 
New Testament from Christianity. Christianity 
did not begin as a reh'gion of books but as a religion 
of spirit. There was neither time nor need to 
write books when the Lord Jesus was at the very 
doors. Still less was there need of authoritative 
books to guide men whose dominant conviction 
was that they had the Mind of Christ, the very 
Spirit of God, guiding them constantly from within. 

But the ancient Christians did write. Situations 
arose that drew letters from them — letters of ac- 
knowledgment, thanks, criticism, recommendation, 
instruction, or advice. These letters, Kke our mod- 
ern letters, were written to serve an immediate and 
pressing need. Situations arose which even drew 
forth books from these early Christians — books to 
save people from perplexities or mistakes, or to 
comfort them in anxiety or peril; but always books 
to serve some fairly definite circle, in a particular 
condition of stress or doubt. This practical and 
occasional character of the books of the New Testa- 
ment can hardly be overemphasized, for it is only 
in the light of the situations that called them forth 
that these books can be really understood. Only 
when we put ourselves into the situation of those 



viii Introduction 

for whom a given book of the New Testament was 
written do we begin to feel our oneness with them 
and to find the Hving worth in the book. 

It may be helpful to conceive the writings of the 
New Testament as grouped about four notable 
events or movements: the Greek mission, that is, 
the evangelization of the gentile world; the fall 
of Jerusalem; the persecution of Domitian; and 
the rise of the early sects. The New Testament 
shows us the church first deep in its missionary 
enterprise, then seeking a reHgious explanation of 
contemporary history, then bracing itself in the 
midst of persecution, then plunged into controversy 
over its own beliefs. 

The New Testament contains the bulk of that 
extraordinary Hterature precipitated by the Chris- 
tian movement in the most interesting period of 
its development. . Christianity began its world- 
career as a hope of Jesus' messianic return; it very 
soon became a permanent and organized church. 
The books of the New Testament show us those 
first eschatological expectations gradually accom- 
modating themselves to conditions of permanent 
existence. 

The historical study of the New Testament seeks 
to trace this movement of Hfe and thought that 
lies back of the several books, and to relate the 
books to this development. It has yielded certain 
very definite positive results which are both inter- 



Introduction ix 

esting and helpful. Through it these old books 
recover something of the power of speech, and 
begin to come to us with the accent and intona- 
tion which they had for the readers for whom they 
were originally written. 

The short chapters of this book are designed to 
present vividly and unconventionally the situa- 
tions which called forth the several books or letters, 
and the way in which each book or letter sought to 
meet the special situation to which it was addressed. 
These chapters naturally owe much to scholars Hke 
Burton, Bacon, Scott, McGiffert, Moffatt, and 
Harnack, who have done so much for the historical 
understanding of the New Testament. But it is 
hoped that a brief constructive presentation of the 
background of each book without technicality or 
elaboration may bring back particularly to intel- 
Ugent laymen and young people the individuaHty 
and vital interest of the writings of the New 
Testament. 

The purpose of this work is threefold: (i) The 
book may be used as a basis for definite study of 
the New Testament individually or in classes. 
The Suggestions for Study are prepared for this 
purpose. General and special bibHographies for 
further reading will be found at the end of the 
book. The student is advised not to attempt a 
detailed investigation of specific parts of the vari- 
ous books, but to seek to get the large general aim 



X Introduction 

which controlled each individual writer. (2) It 
may be read as a continuous narrative, without 
regard to the Suggestions for Study at the close of 
each chapter. It will then afford exactly what its 
name impHes, the story of the New Testament. 
The references to which the occasional superior 
numerals relate will be found at the beginning of 
the Suggestions for Study which follow each chap- 
ter. (3) After each chapter the corresponding book 
of the New Testament may be read, preferably at 
one sitting, and thus each piece of literature may 
make its own appeal on the basis of the introduc- 
tory interpretation. 

Edgar J. Goodspeed 
Chicago 
November i, 1915 



CHAPTER 
I. 


CONTENTS 

The Letters to the Thessalonians . . 


PAGE 

I 


II. 


The Letter to the Galatians .... 


8 


III. 


The First Letter to the Corinthians 


14 


IV. 


The Second Letter to the Corinthians . 


20 


V. 


The Letter to the Romans 


28 


VI. 


The Letter to the Philippians . . . 


35 


VII. 


The Letters to Phtt,emon, to the Colos- 
siANS, and to the Ephesians . . . . 


41 


VIII. 


The Gospel According to Mark . . . 


49 


IX. 


The Gospel According to Matthew . . 


55 


X. 


The Gospel According to Luke . . . 


63 



XI. The Acts of the Apostles 70 

XII. The Revelation of John 75 

XIII. The Epistle to the Hebrews .... 85 

XIV. The First Epistle of Peter 95 

XV. The Epistle of James 100 

XVI. The Letters of John 106 

XVII. The Gospel According to John . . . 114 

XVIII. The Letters to Timothy and to Titus . 125 

XIX. The Epistle of Jude and the Second 

Epistle of Peter 132 

XX. The Making of the New Testament . . 137 

Bibliography 146 

Index 149 

xi 



CHAPTER I 
THE LETTERS TO THE THESSALONIANS 

About the middle of the first century, in the 
Greek city of Corinth, a man sat down and wrote a 
letter. He had just received some very cheering 
news from friends of his, away in the north, about 
whom he had been very anxious, and he wrote to 
tell them of his relief at this news. As he wrote 
or dictated, his feelings led him to review his whole 
acquaintance with them, to tell them about his 
anxiety and how it had been relieved, and to try 
to help them in some of their perplexities, and be- 
fore he closed he had written what we should call a 
long letter. And this is how our New Testament, 
and indeed all Christian Hterature, began. For the 
writer was Paul, and his friends were the people at 
Thessalonica whom he had interested in his doc- 
trine that Jesus of Nazareth, who had been put to 
death in Jerusalem twenty years before, was the 
divine Messiah, and was to come again to judge 
the world. 

Paul himself had believed this for a long time, 
and five or six years before he had set out to travel 
westward through the Roman Empire with this 
teaching. At first he had worked in Cyprus and 
Asia Minor, and it was only a few months before 



2 The Story of the New Testament 

that he with two friends had crossed from Asia 
to Europe and reached the soil of Greece. Paul 
was a whole-hearted, loyal friend, and he doubtless 
made friends everywhere for himseK and his teach- 
ing; but he never made quite such friends as 
those who had gathered around him in these first 
months in Greece. At PhiHppi, where he stopped 
first and tried to interest people in his gospel, his 
friends made him come and Hve with them; and 
they thought so much of him that then and for 
years afterward they sent him money so that he 
might not have to work at his trade all the time 
but might have more opportimity to teach and 
spread his message.^ The Thessalonians too had 
become staunch friends of Paul's. Some of them 
had risked their Hves for him when they had known 
him only a few weeks, and others were to stand by 
him all through his Hfe and to go with him long 
afterward, when he was taken, as a prisoner, from 
Caesarea to Rome. That was the kind of people 
in whom Paul had become so interested, and to 
whom he now wrote his letter. He had been wel- 
comed by them when he first came to Thessalonica, 
and his very success among them had awakened 
jealousy and distrust on the part of others. At 
last Paul had been obliged to leave the city to pre- 
vent violence to himself and his friends. He had 
gone on westward along the Roman road to Beroea 
and later had turned south to Athens, but all the 



The Letters to the Thessalonians 3 

time he had been anxious about his friends at Thes- 
salonica. What had happened to them ? Had the 
opposition of their neighbors made them forget him 
and give up what he had taught them, or were they 
still loyal to him and his gospel? To go back 
and find out would have been perilous to him and 
probably to them also. So Paul had decided to 
send his young friend Timothy to seek them out 
and learn how matters stood. At the same time 
Paul's other companion, Silvanus, an older, more 
experienced man, had been sent on a similar errand 
to the more distant city of Philippi, and Paul, left 
all alone, had waited anxiously, first at Athens and 
then at Corinth, for news to come. 

When at last it came, it was good news.^ The 
Thessalonians had not forgotten Paul. They still 
stood by him and his gospel, in spite of all that 
their neighbors were saying against him. They 
still held their faith in Jesus as the divine Messiah 
and were eagerly waiting for his return from heaven, 
to reward and avenge them; and they were eager 
to see Paul again. So Paul came to write his let- 
ter to them. He wanted to tell them of his relief 
and delight at their faithfulness and loyalty, which 
filled his heart with gratitude. He wished also to 
refute some charges against his own work and char- 
acter which people whom he had antagonized in 
Thessalonica had been making against him.^ Then 
too Paul wished to tell his friends how much he 



4 The Story of the New Testament 

had hoped to reach them, and how when this had 
proved impossible he had sent one of his two com- 
panions to them to find out all that he wished to 
know, and to give them encouragement and in- 
struction; how he had waited for his messenger's 
return, and how he had at last come with his wel- 
come news. But this was not all. Paul saw his 
opportunity to help his Thessalonian friends with 
their problems. Some of them were troubled 
at the death of friends, who would, they feared, 
thus miss the joy and glory of meeting the Lord 
Jesus on his return to the earth. Others were per- 
plexed about the time of Jesus' return, and needed 
to be told not to trouble about it, but to Uve in 
constant readiness for it. Others were faUing into 
idleness and dependence because of their confidence 
that the time was close at hand. Some needed to 
be reminded of the Christian insistence on purity 
and unselfishness of life. To all these people Paul 
sent messages of comfort, counsel, or encourage- 
ment, as their needs required. He was already 
deep in his new work at Corinth, in some respects 
the most absorbing and exacting he had ever done.'' 
Yet he found time to keep in mind his Thessalonian 
friends and their problems, and to look out for 
them amid all his distractions at Corinth. Paul 
did it all, too, with a personal and affectionate 
tone, which shows how wholly he gave his affection 
to those with whom he worked. 



The Letters to the Thessalonians 5 

We can imagine how eagerly the brethren at 
Thessalonica looked for Paul's letter and read and 
reread it when it came. They evidently put it 
away among their treasures, for that is probably 
how it came to be preserved to us. They certainly 
pondered over and discussed its contents; for be- 
fore many weeks had passed Paul had to write 
them again more definitely about some of these 
things. Something Paul had said or written to 

-> them, or something they had read in the Old 
Testament, had made some of them think that the 
Day of the Lord had already come. Some of them 
had given up work, and were content to Hve in 
rehgious contemplation while their richer or more 
industrious brethren supported them. In their 
idleness some of them fell into unworthy ways of 
life and became a nuisance and a scandal to the 
church. 

^ * Paul was greatly stirred by this. He saw that 
it threatened the good name and the very existence 
of the church, and he at once wrote them another 
letter, our Second Thessalonians. It was a popular 
Jewish idea that in the last days the forces of evil 
would find embodiment in an individual of the 
tribe of Dan, who would make an impious attack 
upon God and his people but would fail and be 
destroyed by the Messiah. Paul in his letter ap- 
peals to this idea and points out that this great 
enemy has not yet appeared and so the Day of the 



6 The Story of the New Testament 

Lord cannot have comey There is therefore no 
excuse for giving up the ordinary industry of Hfe. 
He reminds them of a precept he has given them 
before: If anyone will not work, give him nothing 
to eat. Those who refuse to obey this ultimatum 
are to be practically dropped from the Christian 
fellowship. 

With these two short letters Paul began Chris- 
tian Hterature. Before he ceased to teach the 
churches he wrote more than one-fourth of what 
is now included in the New Testament. But in 
these first letters we see the difficulties that already 
were besetting the small new groups of Christians, 
and the patience, skill, and boldness with which 
their founder looked after their development. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^Phil. 4:15; ^I Thess. 3:6-8; n Thess. 
2:1-12; 4Actsi8:i, 5; s II Thess. 2:1-3. 

2. For an account of the founding of the church at 
Thessalonica read Acts 17:1-15. 

3. Note the occasion of I Thess., 3 : 6-8, and the progress 
aheady made by the gospel, i : 7? 8; 2:1. 

4. Picture the receipt of I Thessalonians by the Thes- 
salonian Christians, and read it aloud as they must have 
done in a meeting of the church. 

5. Note Paul's review of his success among them, i : 2 — 
2:1; his vigorous defense of his methods and motives as a 
missionary, 2:1-12; his account of his feelings and move- 
ments after leaving them, 2 : 17 — z - 10 j his moral teachings, 
so necessary for gentile converts, 4:1-10; 5:8-23; his 



The Letters to the Thessalonians 7 

commendation of labor and self-support, 4:10-12; the 
comfort he gives them about the Thessalonian dead, 4 : 13-18, 
and his reminder of the unexpectedness of the return of 
Jesus, 5:1-^. 

6. Observe the prayerful and nobly moral tone of the 
letter, the intense personal affection Paul shows for his 
converts, 2 : 7-12, 17 ; 3 : 6-10, and the sanity of his practical 
advice, 4:11, 12; 5:12-14. 

7. What facts about Jesus and what expectations about 
him does the letter reveal ? 1:10; 2:15,19; 4:14-17; 5:9, 
10, 23. 

8. Read II Thessalonians, noting its marked resemblance 
to I Thessalonians in many particulars: I Thess. 2:9 and 
II Thess. 3:8; I Thess. 3:11-13 and II Thess. 2:16, 17; 
I Thess. 1:1-7 and II Thess. 1:1-4; the sterner attitude 
toward the idlers, 3:6-15; the very Jewish argument in 
2 : i-io that the Lawless One is not yet openly at work and 
therefore the Day of the Lord cannot have arrived; and 
the salutation written by Paul's own hand at the close 
3:17,18. 



CHAPTER II 
THE LETTER TO THE GALATIANS 

Upon returning to the shores of Syria after his 
long residence in Corinth, Paul had news that 
greatly disturbed him. An enemy had appeared 
in his rear. Among the people who had accepted 
his teaching about Jesus were many in the towns 
of central Asia Minor — Iconium, Derbe, Lystra, 
and Antioch. These places lay in what the Romans 
called Galatia, though that name included also an 
additional district lying farther north. They were 
in the region that has only recently been traversed 
by the new railway through Asia Minor. Their 
people had welcomed Paul as an apostle of Christ 
and had gladly accepted his message of faith, hope, 
and love. 

But there had now come among them Christian 
teachers of Jewish birth, who looked upon the 
Christianity Paul presented as spurious and dan- 
gerous. Who these men were we have no way of 
knowing, but their idea of Christianity can easily 
be made out. They beHeved Jesus to be the com- 
pleter of the agreement or covenant God had made 
with Abraham. In order to benefit by his gospel 
one must be an heir of Abraham, they held, and 
thus of God's agreement with him; that is, one 
8 



The Letter to the Galatians 9 

must be bom a Jew or become one by accepting 
the rite of circumcision and being adopted into the 
Jewish people/ 

There was certainly some reasonableness in this 
view. The men who held it were indignant that 
the Galatians should call themselves Christians 
without having first been circumcised and having 
thus acknowledged their adoption into the Jewish 
nation; and they considered Paul a wholly unau- 
thorized person and no apostle at all, since he was 
not one of the twelve whom Jesus had called about 
him in Galilee twenty years before, nor even a 
representative of theirs. It was evidently the feel- 
ing of these new arrivals that the twelve apostles 
were the sole genuine authorities on Christianity 
and what might be taught under its name. This 
claim also seemed reasonable, and it made the 
Galatian believers wonder what PauFs relation was 
to these authorized leaders of the church, and why 
he had given them so imperfect an idea of the gos- 
pel. They admitted the justice of the claims of 
the new missionaries and set about conforming to 
their demands in order that they might be as good 
Christians as they knew how to be. v 

Where Paul first learned of this change in the 
beliefs of the Galatians is not certain, but very 
probably it was at Antioch in Syria, to which he 
returned from Corinth. He wished to proceed as 
soon as possible to Galatia to straighten matters 



lo The Story of the New Testament 

out in person f For some reason he could not start 
at once, and so he wrote or dictated a letter in 
which he did his best to show the Galatian Chris- 
tians their mistake. This he sent off immediately, 
probably intending to follow it in person as soon 
as he could do so. 

/ The letter Paul wrote is the most vigorous and 
vehement that we have from his pen. It shows 
Paul to have been a powerful and original thinker, 
and is the more remarkable as it was written, not as 
a book or an essay, but simply as a personal letter, 
intended to save some of his friends from wrong 
views of religion. In opposition to the claims of 
the Jewish-Christian teachers from Palestine, he 
affirms with his very first words that he is an 
apostle, divinely commissioned, with an authority 
quite independent of that of the apostles at Jeru- 
salem. This authority Paul bases on his own re- 
ligious experience and convictions, in which he feels 
that the Spirit of God speaks to him; and this 
rightly seems to him the best, and indeed the only, 
kind of reHgious authority that really reaches the 
inner hfe. 

The demand of the newcomers in Galatia that 
the Christians there should undertake some of the 
practices of the Jewish law, such as circumcision 
and the reHgious observance of certain days,^ Paul 
denounces as unreasonable and dangerous. It is 
dangerous because if acknowledged it will surely 



The Letter to the Galatians ii 

bring in after it the necessity of obeying all the 
rest of the Jewish law, and will reduce the religious 
life of the Galatians to the tedious observance of 
countless rehgious forms. ^ It is unreasonable be- 
cause, even in the case of Abraham, long before 
there was any Jewish law, faith, that is, an atittude 
of trust in God and obedience to his will, was the" 
only thing that made men pleasing to God.^ It 
was when the Galatians came into this attitude 
of trust and dependence upon God that they felt 
the presence of his spirit in their hearts as never 
before, and in this fact Paul finds evidence of the 
genuine worth of the gospel of faith that he has 
preached to them. The Law and the Hfe of reli- 
gious formaHsm which it brings with it can never 
bring this consciousness, as Paul knows, for he 
gave it a long trial before giving it up in despair 
and turning to the gospel of faith, hope, and love. 
In a word, the Law makes men slaves, the Gospel 
makes them free. This has been Paul's experience 
and it is his teaching. 

Galatians is in fact a charter of rehgious freedom. 
Its noble ideal of the rehgious Hfe, so far from being 
outgrown, still beckons us forward, as it did those 
obscure townsfolk of the Galatian uplands long ago. 
Paul knew its dangers, but he knew its promise too, 
and saw that for those who would sincerely accept 
it, it opened possibihties of spiritual and moral de- 
velopment which could never be reached by the 



12 The Story of the New Testament 

lower path. The Christian had received the very 
Spirit of God. By that he must regulate his Hfe. 
If he did so, he would be in no danger of gross and 
vulgar sin, but would find freely springing up in 
his Hfe the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, 
longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 
meekness, self-control. 

This is the ringing message that Paul sent in 
hot haste to the Galatians. He usually dictated 
his letters to one of his companions, such as Titus 
or Tertius, writing only a Hne or two himself at the 
end. And this he probably did in this case, but 
emphasized it all, with a touch of humor, by writ- 
ing his autograph Hnes in very large letters.^ But 
some have thought that in his haste he wrote this 
entire letter with his own hand. It was carried by 
some trusty messenger away through the moun- 
tains to the nearest Galatian church and there 
read to the assembled brethren. Then they prob- 
ably sent it on to the next town where there was a 
band of behevers, and so it passed from one church 
to another until all had heard it. Some perhaps 
had the foresight to copy it before it was sent on 
its way, and so helped to preserve to later times 
Paul's first great letter. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

I. References: ^Gal. 5:2-8; 6:12; 2Gal.4:io; ^Gal. 5:3; 
4Gal. 3:6-9, 16, 17; sGal. 6:11. 



I 



The Letter to the Galatians 13 

2. Read the account of the founding of the Galatian 
churches in Acts 13 : 13 — 14: 28. 

3. Note that Paul calls himself an apostle in the first 
words of Galatians as he has not done in Thessalonians. 
Why ? Notice the occasion of the letter, i :6, 7; 3:1. 

4. Read the letter through continuously, noting the 
autobiographical chapters, i, 2, in which Paul shows his 
practical independence of the Jerusalem leaders; the variety 
of arguments, chaps. 3, 4, by which Paul shows the folly 
of seeking salvation through the observance of law; and 
the stirring call to Christian freedom and life by the spirit 
which concludes the letter, chaps. 5, 6. 

5. Read the letter through again, noting what you con- 
sider the particularly fine passages in it. 

6. What does Paul mean by the ''marks of Jesus," Gal.' 
6:17? Can these be the scars of such an experience as 
that related in Acts 14: 19, which befell Paul in Galatia, or 
that in Acts 16:22, 23, which occurred after Paul's second 
visit to Galatia and before he wrote this letter? Cf. II. 
Cor. 11:24, 25. The figure refers to the owner's marks 
which were branded upon slaves. 



CHAPTER III 

THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 

Paul had received a letter. Doubtless he re- 
ceived many, but with all his letter- writing we 

/ know definitely of only one letter that came to him. 
He was settled at Ephesus, working at his trade, 
and very much absorbed in explaining the gospel 
to every^one whom he could reach in that city and 
its neighborhood. Ephesus was a thriving center 

• of life and industry, and people from the other 
cities on the Aegean were constantly coming and 
going. Among them were many from Corinth, 
which lay almost directly across from Ephesus, 
only a few hours' sail away. Some of the Corin- 
thian visitors to Ephesus were Christians, and 
others were acquainted with Paul's Christian 
friends at Corinth and brought him word of them. 
Their news was not encouraging. The Corin- 
thian behevers, though they were probably few and 
humble in station, had di\dded into parties^ Some 
of them had begun to look down upon Paul as a 
man of inferior gifts, as compared with the eloquent 
ApoUos, and of insignificant position in the Chris- 
tian movement as compared with Cephas, that is, 
Peter. They had perhaps been visited by Jewish- 
Christian teachers from Jerusalem, for they were 
14 



The First Letter to the Corinthians 15 

beginning to doubt Paul's right to be called an 
apostle.^ Business disputes among them had led 
to lawsuits between Christian brethren in the pagan 
courts.^ Worst of all, immoral conduct in the Co- 
rinthian church was reported to Paul, for the 
Corinthians had not yet fully learned that the 
Christian faith meant a new Hfe of righteousness 
and love. With all these abuses the very existence 
of the Httle church was being endangered. 

Paul was already troubled by these reports when 
three Greeks who had come over from Corinth 
sought out his lodgings and put into his hand a 
letter from the Christians of Corinth.^ They had 
been Christians only a little while and had many 
things to learn. New situations were constantly 
coming up which they did not know how to meet. 
They had their social problems. What were they 
to do about marriage ? Should they marry or re- 
main single ? Should a woman whose husband had 
not been converted continue to Hve with him? 
When they were invited out to dinner they might 
have served to them meat that had first been 
offered in sacrifice in some pagan temple. Was it 
right to eat such meat, and must they inquire about 
it before they ate it ? Questions were arising about 
their public worship. What part were women to 
have in it, and how were they to behave and dress ? 
Even the Lord's Supper was leading to excesses in 
eating and drinking and bringing out inequalities 



1 6 The Story of the New Testament 

and misunderstandings. The Corinthians were 
much interested in spiritual gifts and their com- 
parative worth. Some rated the ecstatic and unin- 
teUigible utterance which they called ''speaking 
with tongues" above prophesying or teaching. 
Moreover, the persons endowed with these gifts 
were so eager to be heard that the meetings were 
becoming confused and disorderly. 

On the whole the Corinthians were beset with 
difficulties on all sides, and they wrote to Paul for 
advice and instruction regarding their problems. 
He had already written them a short letter about 
some immoral practices that had appeared among 
them or had held over from their heathen days.^ 
But that letter had not told them enough. They 
wanted to learn more about the matter it dealt 
with, and about a variety of other things. 

So Paul came to write what we call First Co- 
rinthians. No wonder it is so varied and even 
miscellaneous. Paul has first to set right the bad 
practices that are creeping into the church — the 
factions, the lawsuits, the immoraHties — and to 
defend himself against the criticisms that are being 
circulated at Corinth. He attacks these abuses 
with the utmost boldness. They must give up 
their factions. Christ must not be divided. If 
Paul preached to them a simple gospel, it is be- 
cause their immaturity required it. And it was 
such plain preaching, as they now consider it, that 



The First Letter to the Corinthians 17 

converted them to a life of faith. The gross im- 
moralities which Paul has heard of among them 
ought to make them humble and ashamed instead 
of boastful. Their lawsuits against one another 
disclose their unscrupulousness and self-seeking. 
Unrighteous men, Paul reminds them, will never 
enter the Kingdom of God. 

From these painful matters Paul turns to the 
questions the Corinthians had asked in their let- 
ter.^- Married people are not to separate, but the 
unmarried had better remain as they are. The 
offering of meat to idols is really meaningless and 
does the meat no harm, yet we have a duty to the 
consciences of others, and must not give them 
offense. When we are guests at a dinner, indeed, 
we should eat what is offered by our host without 
asking whether it has been offered to an idol. But 
in our freedom we are to remember to seek the good 
of one another. 

In church meetings good order and modest be- 
havior are to be the rule for both men and women. 
The Lord's Supper especially is to be observed in a 
serious and considerate way. More than any spir- 
itual gifts Paul recommend sfaith, hope, and love 
as abiding virtues, much to be preferred to the 
spectacular and temporary endowments in which 
the Corinthians are so absorbed. 

Some of the Corinthians had found difficulty 
with Paul's teaching about the resurrection, and 



1 8 The Story of the New Testament 

perhaps a question about it had been raised in 
their letter to him. At all events, Paul comes last 
of all to the resurrection, and defends his beHef in 
it in an impassioned argument, which rises at the 
end into a paean of triumph. 

So far has Paul brought his Corinthian corre- 
spondents — from their petty disputes about their 
favorite preachers to the serene heights of the 
lyric on love and the vision of the resurrection. It 
is instructive to see how he has done it. For he 
has worked each of their principal difficulties 
through with them, not to any rule or statute, but 
to some great Christian principle which meets and 
solves it. Nowhere does Paul appear as a more 
patient and skilful teacher than in First Corin- 
thians. And nowhere does the early church with 
its faults and its problems rise before us so plainly 
and clearly as here. Someone has said that Paul's 
letters enable us to take the roof off the meeting- 
places of the early Christians and look inside. 
More than any other book of the New Testament 
it is First Corinthians that does this. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^1 Cor. 1:10-12; ^i €01.9:1,2; ^l Cor. 
6:1-7; "^ICor. 7:1; 16:17; si Cor. 5:9; <^ICor. 7:1. 

2. Note that Paul had written to the Corinthians 
before, 5 : 9. Observe the sources of his information about 
matters in Corinth, i:ii; 7:1, and the occasion of the 
letter, 7:1. 



The First Letter to the Corinthians 19 

3. Note the immaturity of the Corinthian Christians, 
as illustrated by the evils Paul tries to correct — factions, 
fornication, lawsuits, chaps. 1-6. The Corinthians' letter 
evidently asked about the further topics of the letter, 
marriage, meats offered to idols, the Lord's Supper, spiritual 
gifts, and the resurrection, chaps. 7-15. 

4. Observe the extraordinary variety of the letter's con- 
tents, in contrast to the unity of Galatians. 

5. Read chap. 13, the prose poem on love, and note 
that Paul commends love as superior to the spiritual en- 
dowments which the Corinthians so overprize. 

6. Consider the faults and perils with which the letter 
deals, as typical of the experiences of a young gentile church. 

7. Notice how Paul works through problems put before 
him by the Corinthians to great Christian principles of 
life, 8:13; 13:13; cf. 6:19. 

8. Note the beginnings of dissatisfaction with Paul in 
Corinth, reflected in 1:12, 13; 2:1-5; 3:1-6, 18; 4:1-5, 
8-15. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE SECOND LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 

First Corinthians was a failure. It has been so 
useful and popular in every other age of Christian 
history that it is hard to beHeve that it did not 
accomplish the main purpose for which it was 
written. 

The factions in the church at Corinth, so far 
from sinking their differences and blending har- 
moniously into a unified church Hfe, shifted just 
enough to unite all who for any reason objected to 
Paul, and then faced him and each other more 
rancorously than ever. His letters, they told one 
another, might put things strongly, but after all 
he was, when you actually met him, a man of 
ineffectual speech and insignificant presence.^ The 
old doubt of his right to call himself an apostle still 
prevailed at Corinth. What right had he to set 
up his authority against that of Peter and the 
apostles at Jerusalem, who had been personal fol- 
lowers of Jesus in GaHlee ? If he were indeed the 
apostle he claimed to be, he would have expected 
the Corinthians to give him financial support during 
his stay among them.^ His failure to do this sug- 
gested that he was none too sure of his ground. 



The Second Letter to the Corinthians 21 

While a few remained loyal to Paul, the majority 
of the Corinthians yielded to these views. 

News of this state of things was not long in 
traveling across the Aegean and reaching Paul, and 
stirred him profoundly. Perhaps he went so far 
as to visit Corinth and face his accusers in per- 
son. But if he did so, he was not successful in 
meeting their doubts of him and restoring their 
confidence, and he must have returned to his work 
at Ephesus in the deepest discouragement. Yet 
he was in no mood to give up in defeat or to rest 
under the slanders of his enemies, and he made 
one final effort in a letter to regain his lost leader- 
ship at Corinth. This letter is what we know as 
the last four chapters of Second Corinthians. 

The chief characteristic of Paul's letter is its 
boldness. So far from apologizing for himself, he 
boasts and glories in his authority, his endowments, 
and his achievements. In indignant resentment at 
their persistent misconstruing of his motives he 
fairly overwhelms them with a torrent of burning 
words. His authority, he declares, is quite equal 
to any demands they can put upon it; as the recog- 
nized apostle to the Gentiles he can without 
stretching his authority exercise it over them, and 
disobedience to it will bring vengeance when mat- 
ters are settled up between them. Conscious that 
he is quite the equal of those "exceeding apostles,'' 
as he ironically calls them, whom the Corinthians 



22 The Story of the New Testament 

quote against him, he warns the latter against the 
teaching of such apostoHc emissaries.^ His policy 
of self-support in Corinth was designed to save 
him from any suspicion of self-interest and to make 
the disinterestedness of his work perfectly unmis- 
takable. The false apostles whom they are now 
following would find still more fault with him had 
he let the Corinthian church pay his expenses. 

FooHsh as boasting is, he will for once outboast 
his opponents. In purity of Jewish descent he is 
fully their equal, and in point of services, sufferings, 
and responsibiUties as a missionary of Christ he is 
easily their superior.'' More than this, in the mat- 
ter of those ecstatic spiritual experiences, visions 
and revelations, which the early church considered 
the very highest credentials, he can boast, though 
it is not well to do so, of extraordinary ecstasies 
that he has experienced. 

For all this fooKsh boasting they are responsible. 
They have forced him to it by their ingratitude. 
He has shown himself an apostle over and over 
again at Corinth, but they have not been satisfied 
with that. Now he is coming to them again, but 
not to live at their expense. He prefers to spend 
and to be spent for them; he and his messengers 
have asked nothing for themselves. He writes all 
this not for his own sake but for theirs. They 
must put aside their feuds and factions if they are 
to remain in Christ. Paul is coming again to Cor- 



The Second Letter to the Corinthians 23 

inth, and this time he will not spare offenders 
against the peace of the church, but will exert the 
authority they have denied. 

Paul dispatched this letter to Corinth by the 
hand of Titus. While waiting for news of its effect 
he busied himself with concluding his work at 
Ephesus. Days came and went, and it was time 
for Titus to return, but there was no news of him. 
Paul's thought went back again and again to the 
situation and the letter he had written in such dis- 
tress. Had it been a mistake ? He began to think 
so, and was sorry he had written it.^ If it did not 
win the Corinthians, matters would not be the 
same as before; they would be much worse. If the 
breach was not healed by the letter, it would be 
widened. Paul was still full of these anxious 
thoughts when the time came to leave Ephesus. 
He had planned to go next to Troas, and now ex- 
pected Titus to meet him there, but to his great 
disappointment Titus did not appear.^ Conditions 
were favorable for undertaking missionary work in 
Troas, but Paul's anxiety would not let him stay, 
and he crossed the Aegean to Macedonia, still 
hoping to find Titus and learn the result of his 
mission to Corinth. There at length they met, and 
to his immense reHef Paul learned of his messen- 
ger's success."^ The Corinthians were convinced. 
Titus and the letter together had shown them their 
blunder. They reaHzed that Paul was the apostle 



24 The Story of the New Testament 

he claimed to be, and that his course toward them 
had been upright and honorable. In a powerful 
revulsion of feehng they were now directing their 
wrath against those who had led them to distrust 
and oppose Paul, and especially against one man 
who had been the leader of the opposition to him. 
They were eager to see Paul again in Corinth, to 
assure him of their renewed confidence and affec- 
tion, and were even a Httle piqued that he had not 
already come. 

Paul's reHef and satisfaction foimd expression 
in another letter, the fourth and last of which we 
know that he wrote to Corinth. It constitutes the 
first nine chapters of Second Corinthians. He 
wishes to tell the Corinthians, now that they are 
ready to hear it, how much the controversy has 
cost him, and how great his reHef is at the recon- 
ciliation. He acknowledges the extraordinary com- 
fort which Titus' news has given him, coming as it 
has after the crushing anxiety of those last days at 
Ephesus. He is satisfied with their new attitude, 
only he does not wish them to misunderstand his 
continued absence. He had intended to visit Cor- 
inth on his way to Macedonia, but their relations 
were then too painful for a personal meeting, and 
he had put it off. When he leaves Macedonia, 
however, it will be to come to Corinth. He refers 
in a touching way to the anguish and sorrow in 
which he wrote his last letter to them, and to his 



The Second Letter to the Corinthians 25 

purpose in writing it. His chief opponent whom 
they are now so loud in condemning must not be 
too harshly dealt with. Paul is ready to join them 
in forgiving him.^ 

Paul describes his anxious search for Titus and 
the relief he felt when at last he met him and heard 
his good news. He no longer needs to defend him- 
self to the Corinthians, but he does set forth again, 
in a conciliatory tone, his ideals and methods in his 
ministry. In every part of this letter Paul shows 
that warm affection for the Corinthians which 
made his difference with them so painful to him. 

Paul had been engaged for some time in organ- 
izing among his churches in Asia Minor and Greece 
the collection of money to be sent back to the 
Jerusalem Christians as a conciliatory token that 
the Greek churches felt indebted to them for 
the gospel. Such a gift Paul evidently hoped 
might help to reconcile the Jewish Christians of 
Jerusalem to the rapidly growing Greek wing of 
the church. In preparation for this the Mace- 
donians have now set a noble example of Hberahty, 
and Paul seeks to stimulate them further by his 
report that the district to which Corinth belongs 
has had its money ready for a year past. He 
wishes the Corinthians to show the Macedonians 
that he has not been mistaken.^ 

It is natural to suppose that this painful chapter 
in Paul's correspondence with the Corinthians was 



26 The Story of the New Testament 

not put in circulation at once, perhaps not at all 
while the men who were involved in it still Hved. 
The Corinthians could hardly have wished to pub- 
lish the evidence of their own even temporary dis- 
loyalty to Paul, and visitors from other churches 
probably had Uttle desire to take home copies of a 
correspondence so hotly personal. But toward the 
end of the first century a letter from Rome revealed 
to the Corinthians the high esteem which their 
earlier letter from Paul enjoyed in the Roman 
church, and this may have led them to collect and 
put in circulation the rest of their letters from him. 
In some such way, at any rate, these last letters to 
Corinth were given forth together, but with the 
letter of reconcihation first, to take the bitterness 
off and commend the writing to the reader by the 
fine note of comfort with which it begins. Second 
Corinthians has never rivaled First Corinthians in 
usefulness and influence, but no letter of Paul 
throws more hght upon his character and motives. 
It is in these last letters to Corinth that we come 
nearest to Paul's autobiography. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^I Cor. io:io; ^ II Cor. 11:7-9; 3 II Cor. 
11:5, 13; 411 Cor. 11:21-33; sil Cor. 2:4; 7:8; ^H Cor. 
2:12, 13; 711 Cor. 7:5-7; ^n Cor. 2:5-8; ^II Cor. 9:1-5. 

2. Read chaps, ia-13, noting the painful stage of the 
controversy between Paul and the Corinthians reflected in 
them. 



The Second Letter to the Corinthians 27 

3. What is the chief point at issue between them? 
ii:S, 13; 12:11-13; 13:3. 

4. Note what Paul's Corinthian critics are saying about 
him, 10:1, 3, 10; 11:6, 7. 

5. To whom does Paul refer in 12:2, 3 ? 

6. How does this section, chaps. 10-13, fit the descrip- 
tion of the third letter to Corinth given in II Cor. 2:2-4; 

7:8,9? 

7. Note in contrast to it the tone of harmony and com- 
fort that pervades chaps. 1-9, for example 1:3-7. 

8. Note the occasion of this final letter, II Cor. 2:12, 13 ; 
7:6,7. 

9. Observe the increased prominence of the collection 
for the saints, mentioned in I Cor. 16 : 1-4, and now again 
in II Cor., chaps. 8, 9. 



CHAPTER V 
THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS 

Paul's work in the eastern world was done. For 

twenty-five years he had now been preaching the 
gospel in Asia Minor and Greece. His work had 
begun in Syria and Cihcia, then extended to C3rprus 
and Galatia, then to Macedonia and Achaea, and 
fimally to Asia, as the Romans called the western- 
most province of Asia Minor. In most of these 
districts Paul had been a pioneer preacher and had 
addressed himself mainly to Gentiles, that is, 
Greeks. From Syria to the Adriatic this pioneer 
work among Greeks had now gone so far that the 
gospel might be expected to extend from the places 
already evangehzed and soon to permeate the 
whole East. Already Paul was planning to transfer 
his work to Spain, where the gospel had not yet 
penetrated. 

Between Paul in Corinth and his prospective 
fi.eld in the far west lay Rome, the center and me- 
tropoHs of the Empire. Christianity had aheady 
found its way to Rome by obscure yet significant 
ways. Probably Jews and Greeks who had been 
converted in the East and had later removed to 
Rome, in search of better business conditions or 
the larger opportunities of the capital, had first 
28 



The Letter to the Romans 29 

introduced the gospel there and organized httle 
house congregations. The fervor of the early be- 
b'evers was such that every convert was a mission- 
ary who spread the good news wherever he traveled. 
The fact that Christianity was already estabHshed 
in Rome helps us to understand how Paul could 
think that Alexandria and Cyrene needed him less 
than Spain, and to realize how many other Chris- 
tian missionaries were at work at the same time 
with Paul. 

Paul was eager not only to occupy new ground 
in Spain, but also to visit the Roman Christians on 
his way and to have a part in shaping a church for 
which he rightly anticipated an influential future. 

One thing stood in the way of these plans. It 
was the collection for Jerusalem. For some years 
Paul had been organizing the beneficence of his 
western churches, not to sustain wider missionary 
campaigns but to conciHate the original believers 
in Jerusalem.^ The primitive Jewish- Christian 
community seems rather to have resented the vio- 
lent eagerness with which the Greeks poured into 
the churches and, as it were, took the Kingdom of 
God by force. The Jewish Christians were never 
altogether satisfied with the way in which Paul and 
his helpers offered the gospel to the Greeks, and 
the growing strength of the Greek wing of the 
church increased their suspicion. It had long since 
been suggested to Paul that this suspicion might be 



3© The Story of the New Testament 

allayed by interesting his Greek converts in sup- 
plying the wants of the needy Jewish Christians of 
Jerusalem,^ and he had aheady done something in 
that direction. A more extensive measure of the 
same sort was now in active preparation. The 
gentile churches of four provinces, Galatia, Asia, 
Macedonia, and Achaea, were imiting in it. For 
nearly two years the Christians of these regions 
had been setting apart each week what they could 
give to this fund, and Second Corinthians shows 
how Paul encouraged them to vie with one another 
in this charitable work — a hint of the importance 
the enterprise had to his mind. This collection for 
Jerusalem has especial interest as the first united 
financial effort on the part of any considerable 
section of the ancient church. 

The clearest evidence of the importance Paul 
attached to this collection, however, is the fact 
that he turned away for a time at least from Rome 
and Spain in order to carry the money in person 
to Jerusalem.^ This can only mean that he felt 
that the whole success of his effort would hinge on 
the interpretation which its bearer put upon it 
when he deHvered the gift there. In the wrong 
hands it might altogether fail of its concihatory 
purpose; only if its spiritual significance was tact- 
fully brought out could it produce the desired effect 
of reconcihng the Jewish wing of the Christian 
church to the gentile. 



The Letter to the Romans 31 

Compelled by this undertaking to give up for 
the time his plan of moving westward, Paul took at 
least the first step toward his new western pro- 
gram. He wrote a letter to the Roman Christians. 
The letter would at least inform them of his plans 
and interest, and so prepare the way for his com- 
ing. In it too Paul could embody his gospel, and 
so safeguard the Roman church from the legaHstic 
and Tudaistic forms of Christian teaching that had 
proved so dangerous in the East. And if this 
Jerusalem journey resulted in his imprisonment or 
even his death, as he and his friends feared, this 
might prove his only opportunity of giving to the 
Romans and through them to the people of the 
West the heart of his Christian message. 

Righteousness is to the mind of Paul, as he 
reveals his thought in this letter, the universal 
need. Jews and Greeks are alike in need of it, for 
neither law nor wisdom can secure it. But the 
good news is that God has now through Christ 
revealed the true way to become righteous and so 
acceptable to him. This is accomplished through 
faith, which is not intellectual assent to this or that, 
but a relation of trustful and obedient dependence 
upon God, such as Abraham long ago exempKfied. 
This relation is fully revealed through Christ, and 
the new way of righteousness has been confirmed 
and illumined by his death. Persons who adopt 
this attitude of faith are freed by it from sin and 



32 The Story of the New Testament 

from the tyranny of the law. The spirit of God 
now dwells in them and makes them his sons, never 
to be separated from his love. 

In the failure of the Jews to accept the gospel 
more than one early Christian thinker found a 
serious problem. Was God unfaithful to his prom- 
ises in his rejection of Israel? Would the Jews 
never turn to the gospel ? Paul explains the situa- 
tion as due to the Jews' want of faith. They are 
not ready to enter into the fiUal relation that Jesus 
taught and represented. But their rejection of the 
gospel and God's consequent rejection of them are 
not in his opinion final. Some day they will turn 
to the righteousness of faith. 

This setting forth of Christian righteousness is 
the longest sustained treatment of a single subject 
in the letters of Paul. From it he passes in conclu- 
sion to instruct the Roman Christians upon their 
practical duties to God, the church, the state, and 
society in general. Few things are more striking in 
these earHest Christian documents than their con- 
stant emphasis upon upright and ethical Hving. It 
is interesting to find Paul urging his Roman breth- 
ren to be loyal citizens, respecting the authority of 
the Roman Empire as divinely appointed, and the 
friend and ally of the upright man.^ The event 
proved that in this he idealized the Roman state. 
Yet, taking the situation as a whole, his counsel 
was both wise and sound, for by virtue of it the 



The Letter to the Romans 33 

church, at grim cost indeed, outKved and lived 
down the Empire's misunderstanding. 

The letter to the Romans is often thought of as 
the best single expression of Paul's theology. But 
it is not less remarkable for its picture of himself. 
In it he appears as the man of comprehensive mind, 
not ahenated from his own people, though he knows 
that his life is not safe among them, actively con- 
cerned for the harmonizing of Greek and Jewish 
Christianity, yet, even while engaged in a last 
earnest effort to unite the eastern churches, eager 
to have a hand in shaping the Roman church and 
to reach out still farther to evangehze Spain. The 
apostle is never more the statesman-missionary 
than in the pages of Romans. 

Many years after, when the Christians of Ephe- 
sus gathered together a collection of the letters of 
Paul, a short personal letter written by him to 
Ephesus from Corinth, probably at about the 
time he wrote Romans, was appended to Romans 
perhaps because, while it was hardly important 
enough to be preserved as a separate letter, yet, 
as something from the hand of Paul, the Ephe- 
sians wished to keep it with the rest. It was 
written to introduce Phoebe of the church at Cen- 
chreae, near Corinth, to Paul's old friends at 
Ephesus, whither she was going on some errand.^ 
A Christian traveling about the Roman world on 
business would find in many cities communities of 



34 The Story of the New Testament 

brethren ready to entertain and help him. The 
value of this, in an age when the inns were often 
places of evil character, can be imagined. Most 
of all, Phoebe's letter of introduction discloses to 
us the several Httle house congregations of which 
the whole Christian strength of a great city Hke 
Ephesus was made up in those early days when 
the church was still in the house. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^Rom. 1:15; 15:22-26; ^Gal. 2:10; ^Rom. 
15:28; 4Rom. 13:1-7; sRom. 16:1. 

2. Note Paul's circumstances and plans at the time of 
writing Romans, as bearing upon its occasion, 1:8-15; 
15:18-33. 

3. Note the theme of the letter, 1:16, 17. 

4. Observe Paul's argument, i : 18 — 3 : 20, that Jews and 
Greeks are both in need of the salvation he describes. 

5. Read 3:21 — 5:21, considering it as a description and 
explanation of this new righteousness. 

6. Read chaps. 7, 8, considering them as reflecting Paul's 
personal experience in seeking righteousness through the 
Jewish law. 

7. Read chaps. 9-1 1, noting the difficulty Paul finds in 
the Jews' rejection of the gospel (9:30, 31; 11 :i), and his 
hope that they will yet accept it. 

8. Consider chap. 16: (i) As part of the letter to the 
Romans: how can we explain so wide an acquaintance on 
Paul's part with Roman Christians before he had visited 
Rome ? (2) As an independent letter introducing Phoebe 
to some nearer church like that at Ephesus: how can we 
explain in this case the letter's present position as part of 
Romans ? 

9. Why does Romans stand first among the letters of 
Paul, although it is far from being the oldest of them ? 



CHAPTER VI 
THE LETTER TO THE PHILIPPIANS 

Paul was a prisoner. His liberty was at an end. 
On the eve of a new missionary campaign in Spain 
and the West he had been arrested in Jerusalem 
and after a long detention sent under guard to 
Rome for trial. At the height of his efficiency the 
arm of the Roman Empire halted his career and 
changed the history of western Christianity before 
it was begun. 

It would be difficult to overestimate the bitter- 
ness of Paul's disappointment. The great task of 
preaching the new gospel in western lands must go 
undone, or be left to men of far less power and 
vision, while the one man in all the world fittest for 
the task wore out his years in a dull and meaning- 
less imprisonment. So it seems to us, and so at 
least at times it must have seemed to Paul. 

Yet in his prison Paul had certain compensa- 
tions. He could at least talk of the gospel to his 
guards, and through them reach a wider circle with 
his message. And he could keep in touch with his 
old friends and even make new ones by means of 
an occasional letter to Colossae or PhiHppi. 

The first church Paul had founded in Europe 
was in the Macedonian city of PhiHppi, and the 
PhiHppians were among his oldest and truest 

35 



36 The Story of the New Testament 

friends. They did not forget him in his imprison- 
ment. Hardly had his guards brought him to 
Rome when a man arrived from PhiHppi with funds 
for Paul's needs and the evident intention of stay- 
ing with him to the end, whatever it might be. 
Nothing could have been more loyal or more prac- 
tical. Ancient prisoners even more than modern 
ones needed money if their lot was not to be in- 
tolerably hard; and the presence at Rome of one 
more man to supply Paul's wants and do his 
errands must have been a great convenience to 
the apostle. 

Unfortunately this man fell sick. Rome was 
never a healthful city, and we can easily imagine 
that his first summer there may have been too 
much for the PhiHppian Epaphroditus. His sick- 
ness of course interrupted his usefulness to Paul; 
indeed, it proved so serious and even dangerous 
that it greatly added to Paul's anxieties. When at 
length Epaphroditus recovered it was decided that 
he ought to return to Phihppi, and to explain his 
return to the PhiUppians and make fresh acknowl- 
edgment of their generous behavior Paul wrote 
the letter that has immortahzed them. 

Paul had of course long since reported to the 
Philippians the arrival of Epaphroditus and ac- 
knowledged the gift he had brought. The news of 
Epaphroditus' illness too had gone back to PhiHppi, 
and worry over that fact, and a certain amount of 



The Letter tg the Philippians 37 

homesickness besides, had added to the misfortunes 
of Epaphroditus.^ As these facts put very kindly 
and sympathetically by Paul come out in the letter, 
we cannot escape the feehng that what Paul is 
writing is in part an apology for the return of Epa- 
phroditus, who, the Philippians might well have 
thought, should not have left Rome as long as 
Paul had any need of him.^ 

Paul's letter exhibits from the start his cordial 
imderstanding with the PhiKppians. They are his 
partners in the great gospel enterprise. From the 
first day of his acquaintance with them they have 
been so. Again and again in his missionary travels 
they have sent him money, being the first church 
of which we have any knowledge which put money 
into Christian missions. But the Philippians did 
it quite as much for Paul their friend as for the 
missionary cause; for, when his missionary activity 
was interrupted, they continued and increased 
their gifts. Amid the divisions and differences — 
with Barnabas, Mark, Peter, the Jerusalem pillars, 
the Corinthians, the Galatians and their teachers 
— which attended the career of Paul, it is refresh- 
ing to find one church that never misunderstood 
him, but supported him loyally with men and 
money when he was at the height of his missionary 
preaching and when he was shut up in prison; 
one church that really appreciated Paul, and did 
itself the lasting honor of giving him its help. 



38 The Story of the New Testament 

Paul is able to tell the Philippians that his im- 
prisonment has not checked the progress of the gos- 
pel preaching in the West. Not only has he been 
able to reach with his message many in the Prae- 
torian guard and in that vast estabhshment of 
slaves, freedmen, and persons of every station 
known as the household of Caesar, but the very 
fact that he is in prison for his faith has given what 
Httle preaching he can still do added power, and 
inspired other Christians to preach more earnestly 
than ever. On the other hand, preachers of differ- 
ent views of Christianity have been spurred to new 
exertions now that their great opponent is off the 
field. So Paul's imprisonment is really furthering 
the preaching of the gospel, and he comforts himself 
in his inactivity with this reflection. 

The PhiHppians are of course anxious to know 
what Paul's prospects are for a speedy trial and 
acquittal. He can only assure them of his own 
serenity and resignation. If he is to die and be 
with Christ, he is more than ready; but if there 
is still work for him to do for them and others, 
as he is confident there is, he will be with them 
again to help and cheer them. Meantime he 
plans to send Timothy to them to learn how 
they are, and he hopes shortly to be able to come 
himself. It would seem that while Paul's situa- 
tion is still decidedly serious it is not altogether 
desperate. 



The Letter to the Philippians 39 

With these references to his own prospects and 
the progress of the gospel in Rome, Paul combines 
a great deal of practical instruction. The PhiKp- 
pians are to cultivate joy, harmony, unselfishness, 
and love. In the midst of his letter^ some chance 
event or sudden recollection brings to his mind the 
peril they are in from the ultra-Jewish Christian 
teachers who have so disturbed his work in Galatia 
and elsewhere, and he prolongs his letter to warn 
the PhiHppians against them. 

Paul must have had occasion to write to the 
PhiHppians at least four times before Epaphroditus 
carried this letter back to them. Perhaps those 
earher letters were less full and intimate, confining 
themselves closely to the business with which they 
dealt. Or perhaps it was the very fact that this 
was the last letter they ever received from Paul 
that made the PhiHppian church preserve and 
prize it. For out of his narrow prison and his own 
hard experience Paul had sent them one of his 
greatest expressions of the principle of the Chris- 
tian Hfe: "Brethren, whatsoever things are true, 
honorable, just, pure .... think on these things 
.... and the God of peace shall be with you." 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^Phil. 2 : 26; ^Phil. 2 : 25, 29, 30; ^Phil. 3:2. 

2. Read the story of the founding of the Philippian 
church, Acts 16: 11-40. 



40 The Story of the New Testament 

3. On what occasions did Paul probably write to 
the Philippians? Cf. 4:15, 16; II Cor. 11:9; Phil. 2:25; 
4:10, 18. 

4. Is 3 : 1 a reference to a former letter ? 

5. For Paul's experiences since writing to the Romans 
cf. Acts 20:4 — 28:28. 

6. What effect had Paul's imprisonment had on the 
preaching of the gospel ? Cf. i : 12-17. 

7. How does Paul view the propagation of other types of 
Christian teaching ? Cf. 1:18; 3:2-6. 

8. Consider whether this letter is less logically organized 
than Romans, Galatians, or I Corinthians. How do you 
explain its informaHty of structure ? 

9. Notice the type of Christian living it commends, 
2:1-18, and its frequent emphasis of joy. 

10. Do we know of any other church which helped Paul 
with money for his own expenses besides that at Philippi ? 
How often did the PhiHppians do this? Cf. 4:15-18; II 
Cor. 11:9. 

11. What does the letter show as to Paul's own attitude 
toward his imprisonment and possible execution ? 



CHAPTER VII ^ 

THE LETTERS TO PHILEMON, TO THE COLOS- 
SIANS, AND TO THE EPHESIANS 

Of the many letters Paul must have written, only 
one that is purely personal hks come down to us. 
It was sent by the hand of a runaway slave to his 
master, to whom Paul was sending him back. 

During Paul's imprisonment at Rome he had 
become acquainted with a young man named 
Onesimus, who under his influence had become a 
Christian. In the course of their acquaintance 
Paul had learned his story. He had been a slave 
and had belonged to a certain Philemon, a resident 
of Colossae, and had run away from his master, 
probably taking with him in his flight money or J 
valuables belonging to Philemon. He had found 
his way to Rome — for it seems that he had left 
Philemon in Colossae — and so had been brought 
by a strange providence within the reach of Paul's 
influence. 

Paul's beHef in the speedy return of Jesus made 
him attach Httle importance to freedom or servi- 
tude. He prevailed upon the slave to return to 
his master, and sent by him a letter to Philemon, 
whom he knew, at least by reputation, as a leading 

41 



42 The Story of the New Testament 

Christian of Colossae. He asks Philemon to re- 
ceive Onesimus, now his brother in Christ, as he 
would receive Paul himself, and if Onesimus is in 
Philemon's debt for something he may have stolen 
from him, Paul undertakes to be personally re- 
sponsible for it. Having thus prepared the way 
for a reconcihation between Onesimus and his 
master, Paul asks Philemon to prepare to entertain 
the writer himself, as he hopes soon to be released, 
and to revisit Asia. 

While we may wonder at Paul's returning a 
runaway slave to his master and thus counte- 
nancing human slavery, it is noteworthy that he 
sends him back no longer as a slave, but more than 
a slave, a beloved brother. It was at the spirit of 
slavery, not at the form of the institution, that 
Paul struck in this shortest of his letters. 

The letter to Philemon was not the only one 
that Paul sent to Colossae at this time. There had 
appeared in Rome a man named Epaphras, who 
had been a Christian worker in Colossae and the 
neighboring cities of Laodicea and HierapoKs.^ It 
was probably through him that Paul heard that 
some of the Colossians had begun to think that a 
higher stage of Christian experience could be at- 
tained by worship of certain angeUc beings and 
communion with them than by mere faith in 
Christ. They recognized the value of communion 
with Christ, but only as an elementary stage in 



Philemon, Colossians, and Ephesians 43 

this mystic initiation which they claimed to enjoy. 
It was only through communion with these beings 
or principles, they held, that one could rise to an 
experience of the divine fulness and so achieve the 
highest religious development. The advocates of 
this strange view were further distinguished by 
their scrupulous abstinence from certain articles of 
food and by their reHgious observance of certain 
days — Sabbaths, New Moons, and feasts. Their 
movement threatened not only to divide the Co- 
lossian church, by creating within it a caste or 
clique which held itself above its brethren, but to 
reduce Jesus from his true position in Christian 
experience to one subordinate to that of the iniagi- 
nary beings of the Golossian speculations. 

Paul had never visited Colossae. But his interest 
in Epaphras and in all Greek or gentile churches 
led him to undertake to correct the mistake of the 
Colossians. Still a prisoner at Rome, he could not 
visit Colossae and instruct the Christians there in 
person, but he could write a letter and send it to 
them by one of his helpers, who was also to conduct 
Onesimus back to his master Philemon. 

Paul begins by mentioning the good report of the 
Colossian church which has reached him, and ex- 
pressing his deep interest in its members. He 
proceeds to tell them of the ideal of spiritual devel- 
opment which he has for them, and takes occasion 
in connection with it to show them the pre-eminent 



44 The Story of the New Testament 

place of Christ in relation to the church. In him 
is to be found all that divine fulness that some of 
them have been seeking in fanciful speculations. 
This is the gospel of which Paul has been a minis- 
ter, especially to Gentiles like themselves. He 
wishes them to reaHze his interest in them and in 
their neighbors at Laodicea,^ and his earnest desire 
that they may find in Christ the satisfaction of all 
their religious yearnings and aspirations. 

As for the theosophic ideas which are being 
taught among them, Paul warns the Colossians not 
to be misled into trying to combine these with faith 
in Christ. In Christ all the divine fulness is to be 
found. They have no need to seek it elsewhere. 
The ascetic and formal practices, ''Handle not, nor 
taste, nor touch," which are becoming fashionable 
at Colossae, are Hkewise without rehgious value 
and foreign to Christianity. 

Over against these futile rehgious ideas and 
practices, Paul urges the Colossians to seek the 
things that are above. They are to hve true and 
upright Hves, as people chosen of God should do. 
The peace of Christ must rule in their hearts. 
Wives, husbands, children, fathers, slaves, and 
masters all have their special ways of service, but 
everything is to be done in the name of the Lord 
Jesus. 

Paul says Httle about the state of his case. 
Tychicus, who takes the letter to them, is to tell 



Philemon, Colossians, and Ephesians 45 

them about that. An interesting group of his 
friends is gathered about him in Rome, and in 
closing the letter he adds their salutations to his 
own. Epaphras, the founder of their church, Mark, 
the cousin of Barnabas, and Luke, whom Paul here 
calls the '' beloved physician," are among the num- 
ber. Paul sends an earnest exhortation to Archip- 
pus, a Christian minister at Colossae, and asks 
the Colossians to let the church in the neighboring 
town of Laodicea read this letter, and to find an 
opportunity to read a letter he is sending to La- 
odicea.3 

What has become of this Laodicean letter? 
Some ancient Christian writers identify it with the 
letter we call Ephesians, and they may be right. 
Perhaps the name of Ephesus has crept into the 
salutation which begins the letter in place of La- 
odicea. Or perhaps the letter was sent to both 
places, and Paul is asking the Colossians to get 
hold of it when it comes to the nearer church at 
Laodicea. 

The appearance of such mistaken ideas among 
the Christians of Colossae must have shown Paul 
what low and inadequate notions many Christians 
of Asia had of the spiritual significance of Christ. 
It was evidently desirable to anticipate and prevent 
the spread of these views by presenting a higher 
conception of Christ's place and function in reli- 
gious experience. This is probably what Paul 



46 The Story of the New Testament 

sought to do in the letter to the Laodiceans. It is 
clearly what he undertakes in the letter known to 
us as Ephesians. Every spiritual blessing, he tells 
his readers, is theirs in Christ. Through him 
they are adopted by God as sons. Redemption 
and forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit 
they receive through Christ. Paul would have 
them reahze the greatness and richness of the 
Christian salvation which God has wrought in 
Christ, whom he has made supreme. To this 
thought of the supremacy of Christ, Paul comes 
back repeatedly in the letter. He is deeply con- 
cerned to have them know in all its vast proportions 
— breadth and length and height and depth — the 
love of Christ, through which alone the human 
spirit can rise into the fulness of God. 

Paul writes as one especially commissioned to 
the Greek world.'* It is through Christ that the 
old separation of Jews from Greeks has been 
brought to an end, and the same great religious 
possibiHties opened before both. As followers of 
Christ they must put away the old heathen ways 
and live pure, true, and Christlike lives. Wives 
and husbands, children and parents, slaves and 
masters are shown how they may find in the 
Christian life the elevation and perfection of these 
relationships. 

Ephesians is very much Hke Colossians. This 
is not surprising, if it was written at the same time, 



Philemon, Colossians, and Ephesians 47 

to be sent by the same hand, to one or more of 
the churches in the region of Colossae; and we 
may think of Tychicus and Onesimus as carrying 
with them on their journey eastward at least three 
letters — one for the Christian brethren at Laodicea, 
one for those at Colossae, and one which Onesimus 
must with no little trepidation have presented at 
the door of his old Colossian master, Philemon. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1 . References: ^ Col. 1:7,8; ^ Col. 2 : i ; ^ Col. 4:16; ^ Eph. 
3:1, 2. 

2. Read the letter to Philemon aloud, and imagine how 
that Christian gentleman, offended at the conduct of his 
slave, but full of love and respect for Paul, his friend and 
teacher, would feel and act toward Onesimus. 

3. Note the letter's picture of primitive church life and 
the light it throws on Paul's character and on his attitude 
to slavery. 

4. Compare the persons mentioned in Philem., vss. 1-3, 
10, 23, 24, with those mentioned in Col. 1:1, 2; 4:7-17. 

5. What are the ideas and practices criticized in Col., 
chap. 2 ? 

6. What connection had Paul had with the Colossians, 
and how did he know of conditions among them ? Cf . Col. 
2:1; 1:3-8. 

7. Note the resemblance of Ephesians to Colossians, 
comparing, e.g., the injunctions to wives, husbands, chil- 
dren, fathers, servants, and masters in Col. 3:18 — ^4:1 with 
Eph. 5:22 — 6:9. 

8. Does Eph. 3 : 2 sound as though it were written to 
Paul's old friends at Ephesus? Cf. Acts, chap. 19, and 
20:17-38. 



48 The Story of the New Testament 

9. With the impersonal tone of Ephesians contrast 
Rom,, chap. 16, with its nmnerous personal references and 
messages. Consider whether such messages would be likely 
to occur in a letter sent by Paul to the Ephesians alone. 

10. To what letter does Paul refer in Eph. 3 13, 4 ? 

11. How far was this new development in Paul's thought 
of Christ due to the problems which had arisen among the 
Christians of Asia and which Paul had to meet ? 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK 

Peter was dead. The impulsive apostle who 
had followed Jesus about GaKlee had Hved to share 
in the world-wide gentile mission and had met his 
death in Rome. With him the chief link the 
Roman church had had with the earthly ministry 
of Jesus was gone. Western Christianity had 
lost its one great human document for the Hfe of 
Jesus. 

The familiar stories and reminiscences of Jesus' 
words and doings would no longer be heard from 
the Kps of the chief apostle. East and West alike 
had heard them, but in the restless activity of the 
gentile mission, and especially in the general expec- 
tation of Jesus' speedy return, no one had thought 
to take them down. And so with Peter a priceless 
treasure of memorabilia of Jesus passed forever 
from the world. 

But there still Hved in Rome a younger man 
who had for some time attended the old apostle, 
and who, when Peter preached in his native 
Aramaic to Httle companies of Roman Christians, 
had stood at his side to translate his words into 
the Greek speech of his hearers. His name was 
Mark. In his youth he had gone with Paul and 

49 



50 The Story of the New Testament 

Barnabas on their first missionary journey to Cy- 
prus, but had disappointed and even offended Paul 
by withdrawing from the party when they had 
landed in Pamphylia and proposed to push on into 
the very center of Asia Minor.^ He had afterward 
gone a second time to Cyprus with Barnabas, to 
whom he was closely related. Through the years 
that had passed since then he had probably kept 
in close touch with the Christian leaders at Antioch 
and at Jerusalem, where his mother's house had 
been from the first a center for the Christian com- 
munity. It was probably as Peter's companion 
that he had made his way at length to Rome, and 
there until Peter's martyrdom had served the old 
apostle as his interpreter. 

y- Mark saw at once the great loss the churches 
would sustain if Peter's recollections of Jesus per- 
ished, and at the same time he saw a way to pre- 
serve at least the best part of them for the comfort 
and instruction of the Roman believers. He had 
become so familiar with Peter's preaching, through /^ 
his practice of translating it, that it was possible 
for him to remember and write down much that 
Peter had been wont to tell about his walks and 
talks with Jesus in GaUlee and Jerusalem, more 
than thirty years before. 

<r In this way Mark came to write what we call 
the Gospel of Mark. But Mark did not call it his 
Gospel; indeed it is not certain that he called it a 



The Gospel According to Mark 51 

gospel at all; and if he had thought of naming its 
author he would quite certainly have called it 
Peter's work rather than his own. But the order 
and the Greek dress of the Gospel are the work of 
Mark, however much he is indebted to his memory 
of Peter's sermons for the facts that he reports. 

In the selection of what he should record, Mark 
was doubtless often influenced by the conditions 
and needs of the Roman Christians for whom he 
wrote. But it is Peter's picture of Jesus that he 
preserves, not of course just as Peter would have 
drawn it, yet with an oriental skill in story-telling 
which may be Peter's own. We see Jesus drawn 
by John's preaching from his home among the 
hills of Galilee, and accepting baptism at John's 
hands, and then immediately possessed with the 
Spirit of God and filled with a divine sense of his 
commission as God's anointed to establish God's 
Kingdom in the world. Yet he is silent until 
John's arrest and imprisonment, and only when 
John's work is thus cut short does he begin preach- 
ing in GaHlee.^ Marvelous cures accompany his 
preaching, and the Galileans soon throng about 
him wherever he goes. His freedom in dealing 
not only with Pharisaic tradition but also with 
the precepts of the Law itself soon brings him 
into conflict with the Pharisees, and their increasing 
opposition before long threatens his life. After 
one or two withdrawals from Galilee in search of 



52 The Story of the New Testament 

security or leisure to plan his course, Jesus at length 
declares to his disciples his purpose of going up to 
Jerusalem to the springtime feast of the Passover. 
He warns them that the movement will cost him 
his Kfe, but declares that God will after all save 
him and raise him up. Bewildered and alarmed, 
they follow him through Peraea up to Jerusalem, 
which he enters in triumph, now for the first 
time declaring himself the Messiah by riding into 
the city in the way in which Zechariah had said 
the Messiah would enter it.^ Jesus boldly enters the 
temple and drives out of its courts the privileged 
dealers in sacrificial victims who had made it their 
market-place. The Sadducees, who control the 
temple and profit by these abuses, on the night of 
the Passover have him arrested, and after hasty 
examinations before Jewish and Roman authori- 
ties hurry him the next morning to execution. Up 
to the very hour of his arrest, Jesus does not give 
up all hope of succeeding in Jerusalem and win- 
ning the nation to his teaching of the presence of 
the Kingdom of God on the earth.^ The book 
more than once predicts his resurrection; and in 
its complete form it doubtless contained a brief 
account of his appearance to the two Marys and 
Salome after his burial; but it had by the be- 
ginning of the second century lost its original end- 
ing, and while two conclusions have been used in 
different manuscripts to complete it, the original 



The Gospel According to Mark 53 

one, probably only ten or twelve lines long, has 
never been certainly restored. 

Informal and unambitious as Mark's gospel 
narrative is, and lightly as it was esteemed in the 
ancient church, in comparison with the richer 
works of Matthew and Luke, no more convincing 
or dramatic account has been written of the sub- 
lime and heroic effort of Jesus to execute the 
greatest task ever conceived by man — to set up 
the Kingdom of God on earth. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^Acts 13:13; 15:37-40; ^Mark 1:14; 
^Zech. 9:9; 4 Mark 14:34-36. 

2. Read the Gospel of Mark, noting that it consists for 
the most part of short units of narrative embodying some 
crisp saying of Jesus. 

3. Judging from Mark alone, how much time would 
you say its action covered ? 

4. Observe the expectation of a reappearance of Jesus 
in Galilee that appears in the Gospel (14:28; 16:7), but 
is not satisfied in the present conclusion, 16:9-20. 

5. Consider how welcome this Gospel must have been 
to Christians who had before had no written record of 
Jesus' life or ministry. 

6. Is it probable that Peter, in the selection of what he 
should relate about Jesus in his sermons, was influenced 
by the needs and problems of his hearers ? 

7. Is it probable that Mark was guided in part in 
the choice of what he should include in his Gospel by the 
situation and conditions of the Roman Christians ? 

8. How long would it have taken Jesus to utter those 
sayings of his which Mark preserves ? 



54 The Story of the New Testament 

9. Note the large part played by wonders of healing, 
feeding, etc., in Mark, and the usually beneficent character 
of these. 

10. What wonders recorded in the Old Testament are 
most like those of Jesus which Mark reports ? Cf . I Kings, 
chap. 17 — II Kings, chap. 2; II Kings, chaps. 2-13. 

11. Consider whether the marvelous is pecuHar to the 
New Testament or whether it appears in contemporary 
Greco-Roman Uterature — Suetonius, Tacitus, etc. — as well. 

12. Do you find much theology in Mark ? 

13. Does Mark regard Jesus as the Christ ? Does Jesus 
so describe himself in this Gospel? Wha,t does he mean 
by "Son of Man"? 



CHAPTER IX 
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 

The Christian movement had failed in its first 
campaign. The nation in which it had arisen and 
to which its founder belonged had disowned it. It 
was as though the Israelites had refused Moses. 
This was the more staggering because the gospel 
had been represented by Jesus' early followers as 
the crown and completion of Judaism. Jesus was 
to be the Jewish Messiah, through whom the 
nation's high hopes of spiritual triumph were to 
be realized. But the Jews had refused to recognize 
in him the long-expected deliverer, and had dis- 
claimed his gospel. Who was right ? The prophets 
had anticipated a redeemed and glorified nation, 
but the nation had refused to be redeemed and 
glorified by such a Messiah. The divine program 
had broken down. 

Yet the gospel was not failing. Among the 
Greeks of the Roman Empire it was having large 
and increasing success. Strangers were taking the 
places which the prophets had expected would be 
occupied by their own Jewish countrymen. The 
church was rapidly becoming a Greek affair. 
The Gentiles had readily accepted the Messiah and 
made him their own. To a Christian thinker of 

55 



56 The Story of the New Testament 

Jewish training this only increased the difficulty 
of the problem. For how could the messiahship of 
Jesus be harmonized with the nation's rejection of 
him ? The prophets had associated the messianic 
dehverer with the redeemed nation, but the event 
of history had disappointed this hope. What did 
it mean ? Were the prophets wrong, or was Jesus 
not the Messiah ? Paul had seen the difficulty, and 
in writing to the Romans had proposed a solution. 
It was in effect that the Jews would ultimately 
turn to the gospel, and so all Israel would be saved. 
Yet since the writing of Romans the breach be- 
tween Jews and Christians had widened, and Paul's 
solution seemed more improbable than ever. 

But an event had now happened which put a 
new aspect on the matter. Jerusalem had fallen. 
The downfall of the Jewish nation put into the 
hand of the evangehst the key to the mystery. 
Jesus was the Messiah of the prophets. He had 
offered the Kingdom of Heaven to the Jews, ffiially 
presenting himself as Messiah before the assembled 
nation in its capital at its great annual feast. 
Misled by its reHgious leaders, the nation had re- 
jected him and driven him to his death. But in 
this rejection it had condemned itself. God had 
rejected Israel and the kingdom it had disowned 
had been given to the nations. In the fall of Jeru- 
salem the evangelist saw the punishment of the 
Jewish nation for its rejection of the Messiah, and 



The Gospel According to Matthew 57 

in this fact the proof that the gospel was intended 
for all nations. 
yL The vehicle for this trenchant and timely phi- 
losophy of early Christian history was to be a book. 
It may be called the first book of Christian Htera- 
ture, for Paul's writings, great as they are, are 
letters, not books, and Mark for all its value is 
hardly to be dignified as a book, in the sense of a 
conscious literary creation. This book was to be a 
life of the Messiah, which should articulate the 
gospel with the Jewish scriptures and legitimize 
the Christian movement. For this purpose a vari- 
ety of materials lay ready to the evangeHst's hand. 
The narrative we know as Mark was familiar to 
him. He had also a collection of Jesus' sayings in 
Aramaic, probably from the hand of the apostle 
Matthew, and one or two other primitive docu- 
ments of mingled discourse and incident. The 
mere possession of these partial and unrelated 
writings was in itself a challenge to harmonize 
and even combine them, just as our Four Gospels 
have ever since their origin invited the harmonist 
and the biographer. 

With a freedom and a skill that are alike sur- 
prising, the evangehst has wrought these materials 
into the first life of Christ. Perhaps it might better 
be called the first historic apology for universal 
Christianity. For it is a biography with a purpose. 
Jesus, though legally descended from Abraham 



58 The Story of the New Testament 

through the royal line of David, is really begotten of 
the Holy Spirit, a syrabol at once of his sinlessness 
and his sonship. Divinely acknowledged as Mes- 
siah at his baptism, and victorious over Satan in 
the temptation conflict, he declares his message in 
a series of great sermons, setting forth in each 
some notable aspect of the Kingdom of Heaven. 
In the first of these, the Sermon on the Mount, 
Jesus demands of those who would enter the new 
Kingdom a righteousness higher than that based 
by the scribes upon the Jewish law, and he follows 
this bold demand with a series of prophetic and 
messianic acts which show his right to make it. 
The Jewish leaders are imconvinced and quickly 
become hostile. His nearest disciples at length 
recognize in him the Messiah, and he welcomes 
this expression of their faith.^ Soon afterward 
they gain a new idea of the spiritual and prophetic 
character of his messiahship through the trans- 
figuration experience, in which they see him asso- 
ciated with Moses and EKjah, the great prophetic 
molders of the Jewish refigion. 

Already foreseeing the fatal end of his work, 
Jesus yet continues to preach in GaHlee, and at length 
sets out for Jerusalem to put the nation to the 
supreme test of accepting or refusing his message. 
They refuse it, and he predicts the nation's doom 
in consequence. The Kingdom of God shall be 
taken away from them and given to a nation 



The Gospel According to Matthew 59 

that brings forth the fruits thereof.^ The last dis- 
courses denounce the wickedness and hypocrisy of 
the nation's rehgious leaders, and pronounce the 
doom of the city and nation, to be followed shortly 
by the triumphant return of the Messiah in judg- 
ment. The Jewish leaders, offended at his claims 
of authority, cause his arrest and execution. Yet 
on the third day he reappears to some women of 
the disciples' company, and afterward to the dis- 
ciples on a mountain in Galilee, when he charges 
them to carry his gospel to all the nations. 
^ Jesus had expressly confined his own work and 
that of his disciples, during his life, to the Jews, 
but since they had refused the gospel, his last com- 
mand to his followers was to offer it henceforth 
to all mankind. 

The Jewish war of 66-70 a.d., culminating in 
the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the 
last vestige of Jewish national Hfe, must have 
brought what Jesus had said of these things power- 
fully before his followers' minds, and shown them a 
welcome solution for the problem that perplexed 
them. Jesus had not come to destroy Law or 
prophets; his work and its fortunes stood in close 
relation with them. But as between the Jewish 
Messiah and the Jewish nation, the verdict of his- 
tory had gone for the Messiah and against the 
nation, for the nation had already perished while 
he was worshiped by half the world. 



6o The Story of the New Testament 

The obviousness of this solution to our minds 
is simply an evidence of the evangeHst's success in 
grappling with the problem ; for we owe to him the 
solution that seems so simple and complete. Few 
any longer stop to think that a triumphant Mes- 
siah apart from a triumphant nation is hardly 
hinted at in the Old Testament. In this as in 
other respects the success of the book was early 
"; and lasting. As a life of the Messiah it swept aside 
all the partial documents its author had used as 
his sources. Most of them perished — among them 
the priceless Sayings by Matthew the apostle — 
probably because the evangehst had wrought into 
his book everything of evident worth that they 
contained. Even what we call the Gospel of Mark 
seems by the narrowest margin to have escaped 
destruction through neglect, and its escape is 
the more to be wondered at since practically all 
that it offered to the reHgious Hfe of the early 
church had been taken up into this new life of 
Christ. 

For the probably Jewish- Christian circle for 
which it was written the new book performed a 
threefold task. It solved, by its philosophy of 
Christian history, their most serious intellectual 
problem. It harmonized and unified their diverse 
materials relating to Jesus' Hfe and teaching. And 
it did these things with an intuitive sense for re- 
ligious values that has given it its unique position 



The Gospel According to Matthew 6i 

ever since. Forty years after it was written it 
was quoted at Antioch as ''the Gospel," being 
probably the first book to bear that name. Twenty 
years later, when the Ephesian leaders for some 
reason put together the Four Gospels, the first 
place among them was given to it, and its name 
was extended to the whole group. A new desig- 
nation had therefore to be found for it, and it was 
distinguished as ''according to Matthew," prob- 
ably in recognition of that apostolic record which 
it alone embodied. Of its actual author, however, 
we know only that he was a Jewish Christian of 
insight and devotion, who preferred to remain un- 
known, and cared only to exalt the figure of Jesus, 
the Son of Man and the Son of God. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^Matt. 16:15-17; ^Matt. 21:43. 

2. In what respects is the scope of Matthew wider than 
that of Mark ? 

3. Note the great discourses characteristic of Matt., 
chaps. 5-7, 10, 13, 18, 23-25. 

4. Note that practically all of Mark (all but perhaps 40 
verses) is taken over into Matthew. Can you think of 
any reason for Matthew's omitting Mark 7:3, 4; 8:22-26; 
12:32-34? 

5. Compare Matt. 16: 13-20 with Mark 8: 27-30, noting 
how Jesus' reticence about his messiahship disappears in 
Matthew. 

6. Compare Matt. 21:19 with Mark 11:20. What is 
the effect of Matthew's way of telling the story ? 



62 The Story of the New Testament 

7. Notice the repeated emphasis on the fulfilment of 
prophecy, 1:22; 2:15,17,23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 
21:4; 26:56; 27:9. How does this relate to the purposes 
of the Gospel ? 

8. Notice the Beatitudes, the Lord's Prayer, and the 
great parables of Matthew. 

9. Consider whether Matthew is richer than Mark (i) 
theologically, (2) historically, (3) religiously. 



CHAPTER X 
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE 

The acts and sayings of Jesus seem from the 
earhest times to have been taught by Christian 
missionaries to their converts, and by these in turn 
to those who afterward became Christians. Paul 
reminds the Corinthians how he had deHvered unto 
them what he had himself received as to the Last 
Supper,^ and the death, burial, and resurrection of 
Jesus.^ Paul had been taught these things after his 
conversion, and he was accustomed to tell them 
to his converts. In this way the principal facts of 
what we call the gospel story became known to 
all Christian believers. 

But the story was not always the same. Scores 
of missionaries were at work about the eastern 
Mediterranean, but not all of them had been taught 
the gospel story by Paul or by the men who had 
taught him. The Christians who fled from Judaea 
when the persecution in connection with Stephen's 
work arose, and who carried the gospel iiito various 
parts of the eastern world, probably did not tell 
their converts precisely the same series of acts and 
sayings of Jesus. After these early missionaries 
had left Judaea, new stories and sayings about 
Jesus' work must have come out as the value of 

63 



vis 



64 The Story of the New Testament 

such memories became more evident. Here and 
there people took the trouble to write down these 
stories for their own instruction and enjoyment or 
for use in their missionary work. Fifty years after 
Jesus' death there had in these ways arisen a 
variety of partial accounts of his birth, his minis- 
try, and his death and resurrection, which to a 
thoughtful mind must have been very perplexing. 
/ It was this perplexity that led Paul's friend 
Luke, a Greek physician Hving somewhere on the 
shores of the Aegean Sea, to write his Gospel. With 
this confusion of partial narratives and oral tradi- 
tion intelligent Greek Christians hardly knew what 
to beheve about the life and teaching of Jesus. One 
such at least, a certain Theophilus, a man of posi- 
tion and inteUigence, was a friend of Luke's, and 
perhaps suggested to him his perplexity and what 
ought to be done to reheve it. For him and for 
the growing class of intelHgent Christian people 
Luke undertook to bring together into one com- 
prehensive and orderly record what was most val- 
uable in the tradition and narratives which had 
sprung up in various parts of the world.^ 
\ - Luke traces the ancestry of Jesus not simply to 
David and Abraham, but back to Adam the son of 
God, thus emphasizing his human nature more 
than his Jewish blood, and preparing the way for 
his later emphasis on the universal elements in 
Jesus' ministry. At the same time he declares 



The Gospel According to Luke 65 

Jesus to be in a special and immediate sense the 
child of the Holy Spirit. The consciousness that 
he is God's son attends Jesus even in his youth, 
when after a visit to Jerusalem he Hngers in the 
temple, calling it his Father's house.^ At the very 
outset of his ministry Jesus appears in the syna- 
gogue at Nazareth and declares that Isaiah's 
prophecy of a Messiah with good tidings for the 
poor and wretched is fulfilled in him.^ In the spirit 
of this prophecy Jesus, though rejected by his 
townspeople, goes to Capernaum and by his cures 
and teaching achieves an immediate success. Four 
fishermen of the neighborhood become his fol- 
lowers. He goes about Galilee teaching the people 
and healing the sick and demon-possessed. His 
disregard of scribal precepts and his claim that he 
has power to forgive sins offend the Pharisees, and 
they begin to plot against him. He calls twelve 
men to him to be his apostles, and in a great sermon 
explains to his disciples the moral spirit which 
should govern their lives.^ Accompanied by the 
Twelve he continues to travel about Galilee, teach- 
ing and healing, and even restoring dead persons 
to life. The Twelve, who have now seen some- 
thing of his work and spirit, are sent forth through 
the country to heal the sick and cast out demons 
and to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom of God. 
On their return Jesus feeds a multitude with a 
few loaves, and afterward asks the disciples who 



66 The Story of the New Testament 

the people think him to be. They give various 
answers, but Peter pronounces him the Messiah. 
Jesus charges them to keep this to themselves, and 
tells them that rejection and death lie before him, 
but that the Kingdom of God will soon come. The 
transfiguration gives his closest intimates a better 
idea of the kind of Messiah he is to be, and he again 
foretells his death and resurrection. 

At length Jesus sets forth on the momentous 
journey to Jerusalem, sending messengers before 
him to make ready for his coming in the villages 
through which he is to pass."^ Teaching and healing 
as he goes, he is more than once entertained by 
Pharisees, and on one occasion is warned by them 
of the danger threatening him from Herod; but 
he only grows more earnest in his warnings against 
themT In the parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost 
Coin, and the Lost Son, he defends his course in 
associating with sinners, that is, persons who did 
not fully observe the Jewish law. As he approaches 
Jerusalem, he reminds the Twelve that death and 
resurrection await him there. Reaching the city he 
enters it in messianic state amid the acclamations 
of the people. He goes into the temple and clears 
it of the traders who use its courts for their traffic. 
The Jewish leaders protest and demand his au- 
thority for this act. His answer does not satisfy 
them and they prepare to kill him. But he teaches 
daily in the temple, already crowded with those 



The Gospel According to Luke 67 

who had come up for the feast of the Passover, 
and in the parable of the Vineyard he sets forth 
the peril of the nation in rejecting and destroying 
him. After a series of clashes with Pharisees and 
Sadducees, he foretells the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem, the coming of the Kingdom of God, and the 
return of the Messiah on the clouds of heaven. He 
eats the Passover supper with his disciples, and 
immediately after is arrested in a garden on the 
Mount of Olives. After a series of examinations 
before the high priest, the Jewish council, the 
Roman procurator, and Herod, the tetrarch of 
Galilee, who is in the city, and although neither 
Pilate nor Herod find him guilty, he is condemned 
and crucified. Immediately after the Sabbath, 
however, he appears, first to two of his disciples, 
then to the eleven apostles and their company in 
Jerusalem. He reminds them that all this has 
been in accord with the Scriptures, declares that 
repentance and forgiveness are to be preached in his 
name to all nations, and is taken from them into 
heaven. 

More than any other evangelist Luke claims to 
have a historical purpose. His aim is to acquaint 
himself with all the sources, oral and written, for 
his work, and to set forth in order the results he 
ascertains. It is this historical aim that leads him 
to fix the date of Jesus' birth by the Augustan 
enrolment imder Quirinius, to date the appearance 



68 The Story of the New Testament 

of John the Baptist in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, 
and to tell us how old Jesus was when he began to 
preach. He is the only writer in the New Testa- 
ment who sees the need of such particulars and 
tries to supply them. 

Luke is evidently a Greek writing for Greeks. 
The fate of the Jewish nation interests him less 
than the universal elements in Jesus' work. The 
stories of Jesus seeking hospitality in a Samaritan 
village, of the good Samaritan, and of the grateful 
Samaritan leper, suggest Jesus' interest in people 
outside his own nation and foreshadow the uni- 
versal mission. Luke's Gospel shows a peculiar 
social and humanitarian interest; the poor and 
unfortunate appear in it as the especial objects 
of Jesus' sympathy and help. A few echoes of 
medical language in the Gospel too remind us 
that Luke was, as Paul calls him in Colossians, 
''the beloved physician."^ 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^I Cor. 11:23; ^1 Cor. 15:3-7; ^Luke 
1:1-4; '*Luke 2:49; ^Luke 4:16-21; ^Luke 6:20-49; 'Luke 
10:1; ^Col. 4:14. 

2. Read Luke i : 1-4, noting what is implied as to pre- 
vious narratives about Jesus. 

3. Notice Luke's use of the first person in his preface, 
in contrast to the anonymity of Matthew and Mark. 

4. Notice his historical purpose (cf. 1:5; 2:1, 2; 3:1, 
2, 23), the sources he has, and how he means to use them. 



The Gospel According to Luke 69 

5. Why did the existence of numerous accounts lead 
Luke to write another one ? 

6. Although Luke seems clearly to have used Mark, he 
omits one account of the feeding of the multitudes and the 
account of the cursing of the fig tree. Why does he do 
this? 

7. Notice that, in addition to the infancy narrative 
(chaps. I, 2), two considerable parts of Luke (6:20 — 
8:3; 9 : 51 — 18 : 14) contain no material found in Mark. 

8. Notice the remarkable parables of Luke: the Lost 
Sheep, the Lost Coin, the Lost Son (chap. 15), the Pharisee 
and the Publican (18:9-14). 

9. The passage from Isaiah which appears in Luke 4: 18, 
19 has been called the frontispiece of the Gospel of Luke. 
Why? 



CHAPTER XI 

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 

Within fifty years after the death of Jesus his 
gospel had spread over Palestine and Asia Minor 
and had been carried by travelers and mission- 
aries across the Aegean Sea to Greece and over the 
Mediterranean to Rome. Companies of Christian 
behevers had been formed in the principal cities, 
and the new faith was spreading rapidly. But 
few of these new Christians had any clear idea 
of how the gospel had reached their communities, 
and by what providential means and through what 
perils and difficulties the missionary travelers had 
found their way to Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome. 
Few had any idea of how the Christian movement 
had first separated itself from the Jewish faith; 
how it had ever come to be offered to Greeks, when 
it had originally belonged exclusively to Jews; 
where this change in the propagation of the gospel 
had begun, and who had first undertaken to carry 
the gospel out of Syria and Palestine into the other 
provinces of the Roman Empire. 

Some men still lived who had seen this wonderful 

Greek mission develop and who had learned from 

others how it had begun. They knew what courage 

and perseverance and faith it had taken to bring 

70 



I 



The Acts of the Apostles 71 

about its spread through the Roman world, and 
they felt that it would strengthen the faith and 
stimulate the zeal of the Christian behevers around 
them to hear the story from the beginning. In 
such a spirit the physician Luke, perhaps in some 
city on the Aegean Sea like Ephesus or Corinth, 
began to write the story of the Greek mission. 

He was himself a Greek, and knew Httle about 
the beginnings of the movement except what others 
had told him. But he was a close friend of Paul, 
who had done more than any other to carry the 
gospel among the Greeks of the Roman provinces. 
He had been with Paul on some of his most danger- 
ous and adventurous journeys and in some of his 
most extraordinary experiences.^ With him he had 
visited Antioch, Caesarea, and Jerusalem, and 
in these cities he had met people who could tell 
him much about the strange series of events that 
had led the earHest Christians to push out first 
from Jerusalem to Caesarea and Antioch, and then 
from Antioch to Cyprus and Galatia. Luke had 
himself witnessed the extension of the movement 
from Asia Minor to Macedonia and Achaea, and 
had finally followed its progress to Rome itself. 
Supplementing his experiences by his inquiries, 
Luke fitted himself to relate the fascinating story, 
with its bewildering variety of riots, arrests, trials, 
councils, voyages, shipwrecks, imprisonments, and 
escapes. These are set in the most varied scenes: 



72 The Story of the New Testament 

temples, market-places, deserts, islands, syna- 
gogues, the courts of kings and governors, the 
streets of those splendid flourishing cities of the 
Greco-Roman world, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, 
Athens, Rome. And over it all is the writer's con- 
viction of the providential hand of God shaping 
the decisions and movements of his people to his 
own great purposes. 

Luke felt this missionary movement to be so 
natural a sequel to the ministry of Christ that he 
made this work a companion volume to his life of 
Christ.^ In both of them his purpose is at once 
religious and historical. He wishes to strengthen 
the faith of his readers and commend Christianity 
to them. At the same time he wishes to make their 
knowledge of Christian history more exact and 
complete. We should have liked more definiteness 
in the dating of some events, and here and there 
we long for a line more about the fate of Paul or 
of Peter, the work of missionaries in the East and 
South, or the beginning of Christianity in Alexan- 
dria or Rome. But we must admit that Luke has 
told his story to its climax, for with the churches 
once estabHshed in Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, and 
Rome, the extension of the gospel to the rest of 
the Roman world about the Mediterranean was 
inevitable. 

We are now accustomed to view history as a 
study of popular forces working their way to ex- 



The Acts of the Apostles 73 

pression and influence, rather than of battles, 
reigns, and dynasties. With such a sense of his- ^ 
torical values Luke wrote his sketch of the mission 
to the Gentiles. Kings and wars play little part 
in it. It is a record of a popular movement, at 1 
first obscure, then gradually making itself felt in 
widening circles and with increasing power. Even 
when he wrote, it was still little thought of and, 
indeed, hardly noticed by Greek or Roman his- 
torians and Hterary men. It was left for this 
Greek physician, the friend and fellow-traveler of 
Paul, to begin the writing of what we now call 
church history. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^ Acts 16:11; 27:1,2; €01.4:14; Philem. 
vs. 24; ^Acts 1:1. 

2. Compare the preface of Luke, 1:1-4, with the open- 
ing lines of Acts, 1:1,2. 

3. Notice that the conclusion of the Gospel (24:49-53) 
is reviewed in the following verses of Acts, 1:3-12, so that 
the narrative of Acts is closely joined to that of Luke. 

4. Note that the descent of the Spirit in Acts 2 : 1-4 is 
in fulfilment of the promise recorded in Luke 24 : 49. 

5. Notice the many lands from which Peter's hearers at 
Pentecost came, and to which those of them who were con- 
verted would return with the gospel. 

6. Notice the constant emphasis of the Holy Spirit, the 
Spirit of God, and the Spirit of Jesus in Acts. 

7. Read Acts 1-7 as an account of the development of 
the early church in Jerusalem. 



74 The Story of the New Testament 

8. In chaps. 8-12 note the gradual spread of the move- 
ment to proselytes and Gentiles in Samaria, Damascus, 
Joppa, Caesarea, and especially Antioch (11:20). Locate 
these places on the map. 

9. Note that this instinctive, unorganized missionary 
movement at length takes definite shape at Antioch, 13 : 3. 

10. Trace Paul's movements through Cyprus, Galatia 
(chaps. 13, 14), Macedonia, Achaea (chaps. 16-18), and 
Asia (chap. 19). 

11. Observe that after Paul's arrest Luke continues 
to trace his movements and experiences until he has spent 
two years at Rome. 

12. Consider why Luke should have stopped at this 
point. Did he write at this time ? Or did he purpose to 
follow Paul's fortunes farther in a third book ? Or had he 
reached his goal in tracing the establishment of churches 
through the gentile world from Judaea to Rome ? 

13. Notice those parts of Acts (16:10-18; 20:5-16; 21: 
1-18; 27:1 — 28:16) in which the writer speaks in the first 
person, the so-called "we sections." Consider whether there 
is any reason for thinking them to be by another hand than 
that which wrote the Acts. Where else does Luke speak in 
the first person ? 

14. Notice that Acts includes many accounts of wonders 
performed by apostles and others, not all of which are benefi- 
cent in character (5:1-11; 13:11). 



CHAPTER XII 
THE REVELATION OF JOHN 

It was a dangerous thing in the first century to 
be a Christian. Jesus himself had laid down his 
Ufe for his cause, and the apostles Paul, Peter, 
James, and John met their deaths as martyrs, that 
is, witnesses, to the new faith.^ Yet to be a Chris- 
tian was not against the Roman law, and through 
the first century we can trace the Christians' hope 
that when at length the Roman government should 
decide what its attitude toward Christians was to 
be, the decision would be favorable. Luke points 
out that Pilate himself was disposed to release 
Jesus, and expressly says that neither Herod nor 
Pilate found any fault in him.^ Luke also brings 
out the fact that the proconsul GalKo at Corinth 
would not even entertain a charge against Paul, 
and that at Caesarea both Agrippa and the pro- 
curator Festus declared that Paul might have been 
released if he had not appealed to the emperor.^ 
Paul had encouraged his converts to honor the 
king, that is, the emperor, and obey the law, and 
in Second Thessalonians had referred to the em- 
peror as a great restraining power holding the 
forces of lawlessness in check."* 

75 



76 The Story of the New Testament 

Nero's savage outbreak against the Roman 
church must have startled and appalled Christians 
all over the world, but that attack, though severe, 
was short, and left the status of Christians before 
the law undecided as before. Nero's victims suf- 
fered under the charge of burning the city, not 
that of being Christians, and Paul himself, as Luke 
indicates, was tried and probably executed as an 
agitator, not as a Christian. It is clear that repre- 
sentative Christians like Luke kept hoping that 
when a test case arose the Empire would not con- 
demn the Christian movement and put Christians 
under its ban. 

But these hopes were doomed to disappointment. 
Late in the reign of Domitian, the emperor- worship 
M which had prevailed in some parts of the 
Empire since the time of Augustus began to 
threaten the peace of the churches. EarHer em- 
perors had for the most part let it take its course, 
but Domitian found divine honors so congenial 
/ that he came to insist upon them. There was 
^ indeed an obvious poHtical value in binding to- 
gether the heterogeneous populations of the Empire, 
differing in speech, race, civilization, and religion, 
by one common religious loyalty to the august im- 
perator, considered as in a certain sense divine. 
Most oriental peoples found this easy. Worship- 
ping nimierous gods, they did not much object to 
\ accepting one more. 



The Revelation of John 77 

With the Christians it was very different. Their 
faith forbade such an acknowledgment, and the 
scattered churches of Asia, where the matter first 
became acute, now witnessed the disappointment 
of their cherished hope of freedom to worship 
God undisturbed, in their own way. It is hard to 
reaHze all that this meant to them. Their early 
teachers had been mistaken. The Empire was not 
their friend and safeguard, to be loyally obeyed. 
It now suddenly appeared in its true colors as their 
bitter and unrelenting foe. For it inexorably de- 
manded from them a worship of the emperor which 
Christians must refuse to accord. The church and 
the Empire were finally and hopelessly at war. 

The Christian leaders of Asia must have realized 
this with stricken hearts, and they must have 
reviewed the history of the Christian movement 
from a new point of view. After all, what else 
could they have expected ? Jesus, Paul, and Peter 
had suffered death for the Kingdom of God, and at 
the hands of Rome. In Nero's day hundreds of 
others had perished in Rome at the emperor's bid- 
ding. The Empire, as they now saw, had long 
since recorded its verdict, and it had been against 
them. 

The matter of worshiping the emperor came home 
to the Christians of Asia in various forms. His 
name and likeness appeared on many of the coins 
they used. He had among them his provincial 



78 The Story of the New Testament 

' priesthood, charged with the maintenance of his 
worship throughout Asia. Christians might be 
called upon, as Pliny tells us they were twenty 
years later, to worship the image of the emperor. 
It was customary to attest legal documents — con- 

V tracts, wills, leases, and the like — with an oath by 
the fortune of the emperor. Refusal to make this 
sworn indorsement would at once involve one 
in suspicion and lead to official inquiries as to the 
apparent disloyalty of the person concerned to 
the imperial government. Why not then make the 
oath ? It was after all a purely formal matter with 
all who used it. Why not simply add to one's 
business documents, as everyone did, the harmless 
words, "And I make oath by the Emperor Domi- 
: tianus Caesar Augustus Germanicus that I have 
made no false statement" ? So slight an accommo- 
dation might seem a very excusable way to gain 
security and peace. 

But in even sHght concessions to pagan practice 
the Christian leaders of Asia saw a serious peril. 
There must be no compromise. The church might 
perish in the conflict, but the conflict could not be 
avoided. The church must brace itself for the 
struggle, and compromising was not the way to 
begin. On the contrary, the church must abso- 
lutely disavow everything pertaining to the wicked 
system through which the devil himself was now 
assailing it. For in the Empire the Asian Chris- 



The Revelation of John 79 

tians now recognized not a beneficent and protect- 
ing power but an instrument of Satan. 

Among the first victims of the kindling perse- 
cution was a Christian prophet of Ephesus, named 
John. He seems to have been arrested on the 
charge of being a Christian and banished to the 
neighboring island of Patmos, perhaps condemned 
to hard labor. He could no longer perform for his 
Asian fellow- Christians the prophet's work of edifi- 
cation, comfort, and consolation described by Paul 
in First Corinthians,^ though they needed it now 
as never before. But he might hope to reach them 
by letters, and, as he wrote these to the seven lead- 
ing churches of Asia, his message expanded into a 
book. He uses the cryptic symbolic forms of the 
old Jewish apocalypses, of Daniel or Enoch, in 
which empires and movements figure in the guise 
of beasts and monsters, and the slow development 
of historical forces is pictured as vivid personal 
conflict between embodiments of rival powers. In- 
deed, his message is one that may not be put in 
plain words, for it contains a bitter attack upon 
the government under which the prophet and his 
readers live. 

The canon of the writings of the prophets had 
long been regarded by the Jews as closed, and any- 
one who wished to put forth a rehgious message as 
a work of prophecy had therefore to assume the 
name of some ancient patriarch or prophet. But 



8o The Story of the New Testament 

the Christians believed the prophetic spirit to have 
been given anew to them, and a Christian prophet 
had no need to disguise his identity. John in 
Patmos writes to the neighboring churches as their 
brother, who shares with them the agony of the 
rising persecution. 

The task of the exiled prophet was to stiffen his 
brothers in Asia against the temptations of apostasy 
and compromise which the persecution would in- 
evitably bring. He would arouse their faith. In 
the apparent hopelessness of their position, a few 
scattered bands of humble people arrayed against 
the giant world-wide strength of the Roman Em- 
pire, they needed to have shown to them the great 
eternal forces that were on their side and insured 
their final victory. For in this conflict Rome was 
not to triumph, but to perish. 
y The prophet's letters to the seven churches con- 
vey to them the particular lessons that he knows 
they need. But one note is common to all the 
letters. *'To him that overcometh," to the victor 
in the impending trial, the prophet promises a 
divine reward. But this is only the beginning of 
his message. Caught up in his meditation into 
the very presence of God, the prophet in the 
spirit sees him, as Isaiah saw him, enthroned in 
ineffable splendor.^ In his hand is a roll crowded 
with writing and sealed seven times to shut its 
contents from sight. Only the Lamb of God 



The Revelation of John 8i 

proves able to unfasten these seals and unlock the 
mysterious book of destiny, which seems to con- 
tain the will of God for the future of the world, and 
to need to be opened in order to be realized. 
Dreadful plagues of invasion, war, famine, pesti- 
lence, and convulsion attend the breaking of the 
successive seals, doubtless reflecting familiar con- 
temporary events in which the prophet sees the 
beginning of the end. On the opening of the 
seventh seal seven angels with trumpets stand 
forth and blow, each blast heralding some new 
disaster for mankind. Despite these warnings 
men continue in idolatry and wickedness. The 
seventh trumpet at length sounds and proclaims 
the triumph of the Kingdom of God, to which the 
prophet believes all the miseries and catastrophes of 
his time are leading. 

The victory is thus assured, but it has yet to 
be won. The prophet now sees the dragon Satan 
engaged by the archangel Michael and the heavenly 
armies. Defeated in heaven, the dragon next as- 
sails the saints upon the earth. In this campaign 
Satan has two alHes, one from the sea — the Roman 
Empire — the other from the earth — the emperor 
Domitian, or the priesthood of his cult. Again 
the prophet's vision changes. Seven bowls sym- 
bolizing the wrath of God, now at last irrepressible, 
are poured out upon the earth. An angel shows 
him the supreme abomination, Rome, sitting on 



82 The Story or the New Testament 

seven hills and drunk with the blood of the saints. 
Another angel declares to him her doom, over 
which kings and' merchants lament, while a thun- 
derous chorus of praise to the Lord God Omnipo- 
tent arises from the redeemed. The prophet's 
thought hastens on from the fate of persecuting 
Rome and the imprisonment of Satan to the glori- 
fication of those who have suffered martyrdom 
rather than worship the emperor. As priests of 
God they reign with Christ a thousand years, until 
the great white throne appears, and the dead, small 
and great, stand before it for the final judgment. 

These lurid scenes of plague and convulsion now 
give way to the serene beauty of the new heavens 
and the new earth, with the new Jerusalem coming 
down out of heaven from God who makes all 
things new. Amid its glories God's servants, tri- 
umphant after their trial and anguish, serve him 
and look upon his face. 

— ^ The prophet begins with a blessing upon anyone 
who shall read his prophecy and upon those who 
shall hear it read. He closes with a warning against 
any tamperiug with its contents. The book is 

x^ clearly intended to be read at Christian meetings. 
More than this, by its repeated claim of prophetic 
character, it stands apart as the one book in the 
New Testament that unequivocally declares itself 
to be Scripture. It is thus in a real sense the nucleus 
of the New Testament collection. 



The Revelation of John 83 

The Revelation is not a loyal book. Its writer 
hates the Roman government and denounces its 
wickedness in persecuting the church in unmeas- 
ured terms which every Christian of the day must 
have understood. It does not indeed advise rebel- 
lion, but it is, from an official Roman point of 7 
view, a seditious and incendiary pamphlet. But 
so symbolic and enigmatical is its language that 
few outside of Jewish or Christian circles can have 
understood its meaning, or guessed that by Babylon 
the prophet meant the Roman Empire. Its value 
to the frightened and wavering Christians of Asia 
must have been great, for it promised them an 
early and complete deUverance, and cheered them 
to steadfastness and devotion. Their trial indeed 
proved less severe than they had feared, for twenty ; 
years later Ignatius found these same churches 
strong and earnest, and forty years after the writing 
of Revelation a Christian convert named Justin 
found this book still prized by the Ephesian church. 
Ignatius and Justin both suffered martyrdom in 
Rome, and joined the army of those who had come 
out of great tribulation, and had made their robes 
white in the blood of the Lamb. But in these suc- 
cessive conflicts, and through many more down to 
the present day, Christians have cheered them- 
selves in persecution with the glowing promises and 
high-souled courage of the banished prophet of 
Ephesus, who in the face of hopeless defeat and 



84 The Story of the New Testament 

destruction showed a faith that looked through 
death, and in stirring and immortal pictures assured 
his troubled brethren of the certain and glorious 
triumph of the KLingdom of God. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^ Mark 10:35, 39; Acts 12:2; John 21: 18, 
19; ^Luke 23:14-16; 3Acts 26:31, 32; ^n Thess. 2:7; sj 
Cor. 14:3; ^Rev., chap. 4. 

2. Read Dan., chaps. 7, 8, as examples of Jewish apoca- 
lyptic. 

3. Read Rev., chaps. 1-3, noticing the light they throw 
upon the state of Christianity in Asia . 

4. Read chap. 4, the prophet's vision of God, noting its 
resemblance to Isa., chap. 6, and Ezek., chap. i. 

5. Notice in chaps. 6-1 1 the seven seals leading up to 
the seven trumpets, each one symbolizing some invasion, 
earthquake, slaughter, disaster, or other of the Last Woes. 

6. Notice in chaps. 12, 13 the war against the church 
begim in heaven and continued on earth by the dragon and 
his aUies. 

7. Observe in chaps. 15, 16 the seven bowls of wrath 
preluding the destruction, in chaps. 17, 18, of Rome, the 
persecutor of the church. 

8. Notice that chap. .20 presents the climax of the whole 
in the judgment scene, while chaps. 21, 22 describe the city 
of God and the happiness of his people, now delivered from 
their persecutors. 

9. Observe the solemn warning of the prophet against 
any tampering with his work, 22:18, 19. 

10. What are the main rehgious ideas underlying all 
this oriental imagery ? 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 

Of all the early centers of Christianity the church 
at Rome went through the most significant and 
dramatic experiences. Founded by imknown per- 
sons about the middle of the first century, it enter- 
tained Paul and Peter, Luke and Mark, witnessed 
the martyrdom of the chief apostles and piously 
tended their graves, in a single generation with- 
stood the fires of two persecutions, and served in 
short as the focus of Christian life in the capital of 
the world. 

All this was not effected without sacrifice and 
devotion. It is the Christians of Rome who first 
appear in the pages of the history of the Empire, 
and it was the extraordinary sufferings they en- 
dured that led the historian to mention them.' 
Hardly a dozen years after the Roman church had 
been estabUshed there burst upon it the storm of 
Nero's persecution, of brief duration but of frightful 
severity. Many of the Christians of Rome suffered 
agonizing martyrdom, and all of them faced it with 
a heroism that wrung sympathy even from the 
callous populace of that brutal city. In that 
dreadful August of 64 a.d. the Roman Christians 
learned what it was to have their dearest friends 

8s 



86 The Story of the New Testament 

and leaders torn from them, to attend these friends 
to prison and to cruel and mocking deaths, to lose 
their little savings by capricious confiscation, and 
so to be brought by the events of a single month to 
the very verge of ruin and despair. 

From such a baptism of fire the Roman Chris- 
tians emerged reduced in property and numbers, 
but more than ever convinced that they were pil- 
grims upon the earth and that their citizenship 
was in heaven. They were sustained in this by the 
hope in which Paul and Peter had confirmed them, 
that Jesus would soon return to set up his messianic 
kingdom, and that then their troubles would be 
over. Their immediate troubles did soon pass and 
gave way to a reasonable degree of security and 
peace, but the hope of Jesus' coming remained 
unfulfilled. 

Years went by. The churches settled down 
from their first exuberant spiritual enthusiasm into 
a partial accommodation to a work-a-day world. 
They had their officers, their meetings, their insti- 
tutions. They still expected the return of Jesus, 
but only as people might who had been expecting 
it all their Hves. The expectation could hardly 
play the part in their rehgious Hves that it had in 
their fathers'. But evidences were beginning to 
appear that they were in turn to be put to the test 
to which Nero had put their predecessors. Domi- 
tian was emperor. Conspiracies and losses had 



The Epistle to the Hebrews 87 

embittered and frightened him. He had begun in 
Rome that reign of terror which so horrified high- 
minded Romans like Tacitus who had to witness it. 

What first led Domitian to threaten the Roman 
church is not clear. It may have been his insist- 
ence upon divine honors for himself, as it was in 
Asia. It may have been the collection for the 
benefit of Jupiter Capitolinus, of the temple tax 
from the Jews, and the incidental confusing of 
Christians with the latter. Or perhaps the in- 
ability of a Christian magistrate to perform the 
religious duties his office imposed upon him first 
brought the Christians again under attack. At 
any rate, toward the very end of Domitian's life, 
he made a series of attacks upon the Christians of 
Rome which left a deep impression upon them. 

The Roman church had more than made up the 
losses Nero had inflicted upon it. It had continued 
to practice that duty of Christian hospitality which 
its location imposed upon it, and to attend to the 
needs of Christian prisoners who were brought to 
Rome as Paul had been. It had not, however, 
developed any outstanding Christian teachers, nor 
as yet taken the place of leadership among the 
churches for which its position at Rome naturally 
marked it out. It was a practical church, but a 
church without imagination. The fact that Jesus 
had been executed Uke a slave or a criminal was 
hard for it to understand and- to harmonize with 



88 The Story of the New Testament 

the messiahship he claimed. And with the passing 
of time the expectation of Jesus' return to the earth 
had decHned in eagerness and confidence, leaving 
the Roman Christians far less ready to withstand 
the shock of persecution than their fathers had 
been thirty years before. 

But persecution and apostasy were not the only 
dangers that threatened the Roman church. The 
very age of the church now exposed it to a peril of 
apathy and indifference which could never have 
menaced it in its youth, when enthusiasm was new 
and hope high. While some might continue to 
hold in a mild way their expectation of Jesus' 
coming, others, now that the generation that had 
known Jesus in Galilee had passed away and Jesus 
had not returned, felt that the expectation so long 
disappointed had been vain, and that the Christian 
movement was played out. 

/ It was to this situation that some Christian 
teacher, unknown to us but well known at Rome, 
addressed the letter which from its strongly Jewish 
tone has come to be called the Epistle to the 
Hebrews. The writer was not in Italy, though 
other Christians from Italy were with him when 
he wrote, and perhaps from what they had told 
him, or from what he had himself observed in Rome, 
the perilous situation of the Roman community 
was clear to him. But the Roman church must not 
go down. Its noble traditions of devotion and serv- 



The Epistle to the Hebrews 89 

ice must not sink into oblivion. Above all the 
great task for which it was in the writer's mind so 
clearly marked out must be performed. The church 
must not only survive but rise to higher forms of 
service, that should eclipse all that it had yet done. 
This is the kindling ideal that this great unknown 
of the first century puts before the wavering Hne of 
Roman Christians. Seeing them unequal to their 
present task, he nerves them for a greater. 

The Christian scholar who undertook to meet 
this situation took as his theme the complete and 
final character of the revelation made in Christ. 
As compared with the beings, men or angels, 
through whom the old Jewish revelation was made, 
Christ is immeasurably superior. They were at 
best God's servants; he is God's son. How shall 
anyone escape who neglects a salvation so su- 
premely authoritative? The Romans must learn 
the awful lesson of the Israelites in the wilderness. 
Like them they have had good news and set forth 
for a better country; let them not like the Israelites, 
through unbelief and disobedience, fall short of the 
heavenly rest. 

Christ is not only far above the old mediums of 
revelation; he is far superior to the old priests. 
This is a difficult matter to explain to the Romans, 
who for all their long experience as Christians, in 
view of which they ought to be teaching and leading 
the churches, are still no better than infants as far 



^ 



go The Story of the New Testament 

as intellectual or spiritual development is con- 
cerned. Only let them remember that persons 
who have once had the Christian experience and 
who then give it up can never recover it. It is 
impossible to renew them again unto repentance. 
Surely none of the Christians at Rome will make 
this irreparable mistake. Their faithful service of 
helpfulness to their needy brethren has long com- 
mended them to God; they must not give up now, 
but hold fast to the end. 

To show his readers the extraordinary value of 
what they are in danger of throwing away, the 
writer proceeds to explain to them the messianic 
priesthood of Christ and its superiority to the old 
Jewish priesthood. On doing this he uses the Old 
Testament in the fanciful Alexandrian manner, 
treating it allegorically and typically. This en- 
ables him to find in the Old Testament evidence 
that Jesus is the final and eternal high priest, of an 
order older than Aaron and even than Abraham. 
His ministry is correspondingly superior to that of 
the Jewish priests. They had to offer over and 
over again, in a tent that was at best only a copy 
of the heavenly sanctuary, the same material 
and ineffectual sacrifices. But Christ as messi- 
anic high priest has offered once for all in the 
heavenly sanctuary the supreme sacrifice of 
himself and taken his seat at the right hand of 
God. 



The Epistle to the Hebrews 91 

With this novel and ingenious interpretation of 
Jesus' religious significance the writer couples the 
practical lesson of drawing near to God through 
the new and living way which Jesus has opened. 
He again exhorts the Romans to keep fast hold of 
their Christian hope. He who has promised is 
faithful; already they can see the Day drawing 
near.«^To return to a life of sin after having once 
experienced the Christian salvation is to forfeit 
that salvation forever and to incur penalties too 
dreadful to utter. It is a fearful thing to fall 
into the hands of the living God. They must 
remember the heroic devotion they showed in 
former days, when in its infancy their church 
endured a cruel persecution at Nero's hands.^ 
That same boldness and endurance they must still 
show. 

Through all the history of God's dealings with 
men, that faculty of faith by which men have laid 
firm hold on the unseen realities has kept patriarchs, 
prophets, and martyrs steadfast to the end. These 
veterans of faith are now looking down upon their 
successors at Rome to see them run with endur- 
ance the race upon which they have started. Christ 
himself has set the supreme example of faith. In 
all the trials and hardships that they are enduring 
the Romans must learn to see God's paternal 
discipline, by which the lives and characters of 
his sons are to be perfected. 



92 The Story of the New Testament 

In a final impassioned utterance the writer re- 
turns to the thought with which he began. The 
new covenant and mediator are far above their 
old Jewish prototypes, and disloyalty to them is 
attended with proportionately greater peril. Our 
God is a consuming fire. 

Exhortations and warnings conclude the letter. 
The Romans must not forget the noble example 
of their first martyr-teachers. Considering the 
issue of their lives, they must imitate their faith. 
They must avoid false teachings and practices, and 
be thankful and beneficent. The writer closes his 
hortatory discourse, as he calls it,^ with the news 
of Timothy's release from prison, promises to visit 
them soon, and sends salutations from himself and 
the ItaHan brethren who are with him. 
' The language of Hebrews shows more elegance 
^and finish than that of any other book of the New 
Testament. Its author was a trained student and 
thinker. What he wrote is so eloquent as to be 
more like an oration than a letter, and the absence 
of any superscription such as letters usually have 
makes it seem all the more oratorical. It is worth 
noting that the Judaism which the writer has in 
mind is always that of the tabernacle in the wilder- 
ness, never that of the temple in Jerusalem. In 
showing the superiority of Christ's covenant and 
revelation, he first among Christian writers makes 
free use of that allegorical interpretation of the 



The Epistle to the Hebrews 93 

Old Testament which has had such grave conse- 
quences in Christian history. Hebrews may be f 
regarded as the supreme effort of early Christianity '-" 
to state the religious significance of Jesus in Jewish 
terms— ''mediator," ''high priest," "Messiah." It 
is interesting to observe that the Roman church 
bravely withstood the attack of Domitian and in 
the century that followed made an earnest effort 
to teach and lead its sister churches in a way 
worthy of its opportunities and its history. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1 . References: ^ Tacitus, A nnals xv . 44 ; ^ Heb .10:3 2-3 5 ; 
3Heb. 13:22. 

2. Consider Heb. 10:32-34 as a picture of the experi- 
ences of the Roman Christians during Nero's persecution. 
Compare with it Tacitus' account, especially these sentences: 
''First those were seized who confessed that they were 
Christians. Next on their information a vast multitude 
were convicted, not so much on the charge of burning the 
city, as of hating the human race. And in their deaths 
they were also made the subjects of sport, for they were 
covered with the hides of wild beasts and worried to death 
by dogs or nailed to crosses or set fire to and when day 
declined burned to serve for nocturnal lights. Nero offered 
his own gardens for the spectacle."— Tacitus, Annals xv.44 
(translation in Harper's Classical Library). 

3. Note the stately, often rhetorical, language of He- 
brews, for example, i : 1-4; chap. 11 ; 12:1,2. 

4. Note that Hebrews calls itself a hortatory discourse, 
"the word of exhortation," 13:22. Can it be a Christian 
sermon afterward sent to another congregation as a letter? 



94 The Story of the New Testament 

5. In this case would the personal references and appeals 
appropriate to one circle be appropriate also to the other ? 

6. Notice the successive comparisons of Christ with (i) 
the angels, who were in Jewish thought the mediums of 
revelation, chaps, i, 2; (2) with Moses, 3:1-6; (3) with 
Joshua, 4 : 8-1 1 ; (4) with Aaron, 7 : 1 1-28. 

7. Read 8 : i — 10 : 39, observing the argimient that Christ 
performs a priestly service of a higher type than that of the 
Jewish priests. 

8. Read chaps. 11, 12, noting the writer's idea of faith 
as the faculty of laying hold on the unseen, and his argu- 
ment that his readers should, like the heroes of faith, find 
in their trials the discipline of their faith. 

9. Notice the frequent paragraphs of practical exhorta- 
tion: 2:1-4; 3:12-14; 4:1,2,11,14-16; 6:11,12. 

10. What is the writer's view of those who have given 
up their faith in Christ and apostatized? Cf. 6:4-6; 
10:26-31. 

11. Who were the martyr-teachers of the Roman church 
whose example the writer commends to the Romans ini3 : 7 ? 

12. Notice the rebuke of ascetic practices in the com- 
mendation of marriage, 13:4, and the reference to meats, 
13:9. 

13. Notice the continued use of somewhat extended let- 
ters in the life of the early church. Had Paul's example 
something to do with this ? 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER 

The Empire's condemnation put a peculiar 
strain upon the churches all over the Roman world. 
The ignorant masses already regarded the Chris- 
tians as depraved and vicious and credited them 
with eating human flesh and with other monstrous 
practices. But quite aside from this the Empire 
had adjudged being a Christian a crime punishable 
by death. The Christian had neither the protec- 
tion of the state nor the sympathy of his fellows. 

In this situation a Christian elder of Rome wrote 
to his brethren throughout Asia Minor a letter of 
advice and encouragement. Perhaps the Epistle 
to the Hebrews had already reached Rome and its 
ringing challenge to the Romans to be teachers 
stirred him to write. ^ He styles himself a witness 
of Christ's sufferings, which may mean that he was 
himself a Christian confessor, that is, one who had 
risked his life by acknowledging his faith before the 
-authorities.^ He sends to the Christians of the 
chief provinces of Asia Minor a message of hope. 
They already enjoy a salvation of unutterable 
worth, and have awaiting them in heaven an im- 
perishable inheritance. All their present trials are 

95 



96 The Story of the New Testament 

to prove and refine their faith. As Christians they 
are to Hve lives of hohness and love. By their pure 
and unobjectionable conduct they must disarm 
the public suspicion of their practices. They must 
obey the emperor and his appointed governors. 
Government is for the restraint of evildoers and 
for the encouragement of the good. The example 
of Christ's sufferings should encourage servants 
when they are mistreated to imitate his patience 
and self-command. All must cultivate sympathy, 
humility, and love. 

No one can reasonably molest them if they Hve 
uprightly, but if they should suffer for their very 
righteousness they would be only the more blessed. 
It is better to suffer for welldoing than for evil- 
doing. They must not be afraid, but be ready to 
give respectful and honest answers to magistrates 
who examine them, and by their uprightness of Hfe 
must silence and condemn the popular calumnies. 
Christ too suffered to bring them to God, and they 
must live the new Christian life which he opened 
to them, not their old gross heathen Hfe of sin. 
,^^The fiery trial to which they are now exposed 
must not be thought strange. Through it they 
may share in Christ's sufferings, and so in his 
coming glory too. It is a privilege to endure re- 
proach for the name of Christ. To be punished 
for committing crime carries disgrace along with 
it, but to endure punishment for being a Christian 



The First Epistle of Peter 97 

does honor to God. They can only commit their 
lives to God, and keep on doing what is right. 

Their elders must do their work in a noble and 
high-minded way, as true shepherds of the flock of 
God under the chief shepherd Christ. They must 
all humble themselves under God's mighty hand, 
and he will in his good time Hft them up again. 
Everywhere their Christian brethren are being 
compelled to endure this same bitter experience. 
God is the source of all their help, and after they 
have suffered a little while he will give them de- 
liverance. 

Among the messages which conclude the letter 
is one from the church at Rome — here as in the 
Revelation called Babylon — in which the writer 
is an elder .^*/ Who he was it is not possible to say; 
but in later times, when the name of Peter was 
being connected with the Roman church, he nat- 
urally came to be considered the author of the first 
great Christian letter, after Paul, that had gone out 
from Rome. Hebrews and First John do not name 
their writers, but the titles given these books in most 
Bibles ascribe them to definite authors, and some- 
thing like this probably happened to First Peter. 'J^ 
But, whoever wrote it, it gave the imperiled Chris- 
tians all through Asia Minor a message of hope and 
courage during the persecution of Domitian, pointed 
out the difference between suffering for being a 
criminal and suffering for being a Christian, and 



98 The Story of the New Testament 

inspired them to overcome by Kves of purity and 
goodness the hatred and slanders of the heathen 
world. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^Heb. 5:12; ^1 Pet. 5:1; ^Rev. 17:5, 6, 9. 

2. Read First Peter through, and imagine its effect upon 
the persecuted Christians of Asia Minor. 

3. Notice the districts of Asia Minor in which Chris- 
tianity was already estabhshed, 1:1. Consider whether the 
order in which they are mentioned is that in which the 
bearer of the letter would naturally visit them. 

4. Which of these had Paul evangelized ? 

5. In view of the hostile attitude of the Empire, how do 
you explain the loyal tone of the letter, 2:13-17 ? 

6. How does this compare with the attitude of the 
writer of the Revelation, in the same general circumstances ? 

7. What does the wTiter imply in speaking of Rome as 
Babylon, 5:13? 

8. Notice the help for the situation of his readers found 
by the writer in the suffering of Christ, 3 : 18; 4:1. 

9. Observe the emphasis upon suffering "as a Chris- 
tian," 4:15, 16. Was this a new thing? The victims of 
Nero's persecution had suffered under the charge of being 
incendiaries or haters of the human race. 

10. What picture of church hfe and of Christian morals 
does the letter give ? 

11. Note that four ancient documents relate to Domi- 
tian's persecution in Rome and Asia Minor: Revelation, 
Hebrews, First Clement, and First Peter. 

12. Observe the strange idea that Christ had preached 
to the dead, which first appears in I Pet. 3 : 18-20; 4:6. 

13. On Christianity in Bithynia (i : i) read Pliny's letter 
to Trajan (x.97) written about 112 a.d., a few years 



The First Epistle of Peter 99 

after First Peter. Pliny inquires of the emperor "whether 
the very profession of Christianity unattended with any 
criminal act, or only the crimes themselves attaching to 
the profession are punishable An anonjrmous infor- 
mation was laid before me containing a charge against 
several persons who upon examination denied that they 
were Christians or had ever been so. They repeated after 
me an invocation to the gods and offered religious rites 
with wine and incense before your image, which for that 
purpose I had ordered to be brought, together with those 
of the gods, and even reviled the name of Christ, whereas 
there is, it is said, no forcing those who are really 
Christians into any of these compliances. I thought it 
proper therefore to discharge them." Some who had been 
Christians "affirmed that the whole of their guilt or their 
error had been that they met on a stated day before it 
was light and addressed a form of prayer to Christ as to a 
divinity, binding themselves by a solemn oath not for the 
purposes of any wicked design, but never to commit any 
fraud, theft, or adultery, never to falsify their word nor to 
deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it 
up; after which it was their custom to separate and then 
reassemble to eat in common a harmless meal. From this 
custom, however, they desisted after the publication of my 
edict by which according to your commands I forbade the 
meeting of any assemblies. After receiving this account I 
judged it so much the more necessary to extort the real 
truth by putting to the torture two female slaves who were 
said to officiate in their religious rites, but all I could dis- 
cover was evidence of an absurd and extravagant supersti- 
tion " — Pliny, Ze^/ez-j X. 97 (Bosanquet's translation 

in Bohn's Classical Library). 



CHAPTER XV 
THE EPISTLE OF JAMES 

The ancient world was full of preachers. Dressed 
in a rough cloak, one would take his stand at some 
street comer and amuse and instruct, with his easy, 
animated talk, the chance crowd that gathered 
about him. He would mingle question and answer, 
apostrophe, dialogue, invective, and anecdote, 
urging his Httle congregation to fortitude and self- 
control, the great ideals of the Stoic teachers. For 
these street preachers of ancient times were Stoics, 
and their sermons were called diatribes. 

Christian preachers had to compete with these 
men for the attention of the people they were trying 
to convert to Christianity, and they naturally 
adopted some of their methods. In the market- 
place at Athens Paul did this informal open-air 
preaching every day, and in doing so came into 
conflict with some of these Stoic preachers.- A 
later Stoic, Justin, became a Christian, and tells 
us in his Dialogue with Trypho how he continued 
to practice this way of preaching on the promenade 
at Ephesus. 

We cannot help wishing that one of these street 
sermons had been preserved to us just as its author 
gave it, and of course we have in the Book of Acts 
reports of several sermons of Stephen, Peter, and 



The Epistle of James ioi 

Paul. It is true that Luke was not present when 
most of these were uttered, and probably had to 
fill out somewhat any outline or report which 
had come to him; but this only means that the 
sermon, if not exactly what Paul or Peter said, is 
what another early Christian preacher, Luke, 
would have said, or supposes Paul would have 
said, in those circumstances. But we have in the 
New Testament at least one ancient sermon pre- 
served for its own sake and not as an incidental 
part of a historical narrative. It is the book we 
know as the Epistle of James. 
^ In James the Christian preacher tells his hearers 
that life's trials, vicissitudes, and temptations will 
perfect character, if they are met in dependence 
upon God. But his hearers must not merely 
profess religion, but really practice purity and 
humanity. They must be doers that work, not 
hearers that forget. They must learn to respect 
the poor, and to feed and clothe the needy. Their 
faith must show itself in works. They must not 
be too eager to teach and direct one another. 
The tongue is the hardest thing in the world to 
tame. If they wish to show their wisdom, let them 
do it by a Kfe of good works. They must give up 
their greed, indulgence, and worldHness, their cen- 
soriousness and self-confidence. Their rich oppres- 
sors are doomed to punishment; only they must 
be patient, like Job and the prophets. Above all 



I02 The Story of the New Testament 

things, they must refrain from oaths. In trouble 
and sickness they must pray for one another. The 
prayer of a righteous man avails much. And they 
must seek to convert sinners, for God especially 
blesses such work. 

These are the teachings of this ancient sermon. 
What is the connection between them ? Do they 
constitute a chain of thought? Are they beads 
on a string, or simply a handful of pearls ? As an 
example of Christian preaching this sermon is not 
at all doctrinal or intellectual. Little is said even 
of Christ. The whole emphasis is practical. The 
preacher's interest is in conduct, in the words and 
-acts of his hearers. 7JIe does not care especially 
about their theological views. For him the only 
real faith is that which shows itself in good deeds. 
Honest, upright, and helpful living is what the 
preacher demands, and he does so with a directness 
and a frankness never since surpassed. It is this 
that has given this fifteen-minute sermon its abid- 
ing place in Christian literature. 

Where this sermon was first preached it is im- 
possible to say. It would have been appropriate 
almost anywhere. That is the beauty of it. But 
we may be sure that it was as a sermon and not as a 
letter that it first appeared. It contains none of 
those unmistakable epistolary touches that we find 
for example in Galatians and Second and Third 
John. It does not end with a farewell or benedic- 



The Epistle of James 103 

tion as so many New Testament letters do. Only 
the salutation contained in the first verse suggests a 
letter: "James, a servant of God and of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are of the 
Dispersion, greeting. '^ 

But a moment's reflection will show that this 
does not prove the Epistle of James to be a letter. 
How would one go about delivering it ''to the 
twelve tribes which are of the Dispersion," that is, 
to the Jews scattered about through the Greco- 
Roman world from Babylon to Spain ? Or, if the 
Dispersion is meant in a figurative sense, to all 
the Christians outside of Palestine ? It is clear at 
once that these words are not the salutation of a 
letter but a kind of dedication for a published work. 
That the Epistle of James was written to be thus 
pubHshed, however, that is, that it is an ''epistle" 
in the Hterary sense of the word, is very improbable 
in view of its contents, which relate to no single 
subject or situation. 

It can surely be no cause for surprise or incredu- 
lity that we possess among the twenty-seven books 
of the New Testament one representative of the 
commonest type of Christian literature, the ser- 
mon. It would be a wonder if this were not the 
case. Like thousands of other sermons, it was not 
only preached but published, with a dedication, 
boldly figurative, to Christians everywhere. The 
unidentified James whose name is prefixed to it 



I04 The Story of the New Testament 

may have been its author or its publisher, or sim- 
ply one in whose name it was put forth. The 
early church sought to recognize in him Jesus' 
brother, who, though not an apostle, became the 
head of the church at Jerusalem;^ but if he was 
the preacher, the sermon's reticence about Jesus 
would be doubly hard to understand. 

There is something very modern about this so- 
called Epistle of James. Its interest in democracy, 
philanthropy, and social justice strikes a responsive 
chord in our time. The preacher's simplicity and 
directness, his impatience with cant and sham and 
his satirical skill in exposing them, his noble advo- 
cacy of the rights of labor and his clear perception 
of the sterHng Christian virtues that were to win 
the world, justify the place of honor his sermon 
has in the New Testament. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^ Acts 17:17, i8; ^ Gal. 1:19; 2:12. 

2. Is the teaching of James as to faith and works incom- 
patible with Paul's teaching as to faith, or only different 
from it in emphasis ? 

3. What did Paul mean by "works," and what does the 
letter of James mean ? 

4. Are the rich oppressors of 5 : 1-6 worldly Christians, 
or is the passage an apostrophe in which the preacher con- 
demns the luxury and heartlessness of the pagan world? 

Cf. 2:6, 7- 

5. What evils does the letter principally attack ? 

6. What are its chief religious teachings ? 



The Epistle of James 105 

7. Do the practical teachings of the letter resemble those 
of Jesus as we know them from the Gospels, and if so, which 
ones? 

8. Read it through aloud at a single reading, and imagine 
its effect upon a first-century company of Christians in some 
house in Rome or Corinth. 

9. Do you observe in James any traces of the preacher's 
acquaintance with First Peter ? 

10. Compare James with typical prophetic sermons, 
Amos, chaps, i, 2; Isa., chap, i or chap. 5 or 8:1 — 10:4 or 
chaps. 18, 19, the sermon on Egypt. 

11. Compare with James a discourse of Epictetus: for 
example, i, 3, i, 16, or the following: "Have you not God? 
Do you seek any other while you have him ? Or will he tell 
you any other than these things ? If you were a statue of 
Phidias, either Zeus or Athena, you would remember both 
yourself and the artist, and if you had any sense you would 
■^endeavor to do nothing unworthy of him who formed you 

or of yourself, nor to appear in an unbecoming manner to 
spectators. And are you now careless how you appear be- 
cause you are the workmanship of Zeus? And yet what 
comparison is there either between the artists or the things 
they have formed? .... Being then the formation of 
such an artist, will you dishonor him, especially when he 
has not only formed but intrusted and given to you the 
guardianship of yourself? Will you not only be forgetful 
of this but moreover dishonor the trust ? If God had com- 
mitted some orphan to your charge, would you have been 
thus careless of him? He has delivered yourself to your 
care, and says, 'I had no one fitter to be trusted than you. 
Preserve this person for me such as he is by nature; modest, 
faithful, sublime, unterrified, dispassionate, tranquil.' And 
will you not preserve him?" — Epictetus, Discourses ii. 8 
(Carter's translation). 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE LETTERS OF JOHN 

About the beginning of the second century a 
disagreement arose among the Christians of Asia. 
It was about the reahty of the Hfe and death of 
Jesus. How could the Messiah, the Son of God, 
possessed of a divine nature so utterly removed 
from matter, have Hved a life of human limitation 
and suffered a shameful and agonizing death ? 

It was a favorite idea in ancient thought that 
the material universe was intrinsically evil, or at 
least opposed to goodness, and that God, being 
wholly good, could not come into any direct con- 
tact with it, for such contact, it was thought, 
would infect God wdth the evil inherent in all 
matter. This idea was held by some Christians 
who at the same time accepted Jesus as the 
divine Messiah. From this contradiction they es- 
caped in part by claiming that Jesus' divine nature 
or messiahship descended on him at his baptism 
and left him just before his death on the cross. 
They inferred that his sufferings were only seeming 
and not real, and from this idea they were known as 
Docetists, that is, ''seemists." 

The Docetists were probably better educated to 
begin with than most Christians, and their profes- 

io6 



The Letters of John 107 

sion of these semi-philosophical views of Christ's 
life and death still further separated them from 
ordinary people. This separation was increased by 
the claim they made of higher enlightenment, 
closer mystic fellowship with God, clearer knowl- 
edge of truth, and freedom from sin. Expressions 
like ^'I have fellowship with God," ^'I know him," 
''I have no sin," ''I am in the light," were often 
on their lips. Both their spiritual pretensions and 
their fantastic view of Christ made them an un- 
wholesome influence in the Asian churches and 
roused more than one Christian writer to dispute 
their claims. 

There Hved at that time in Asia a Christian 
leader of such influence and reputation that he 
could in his correspondence style himself simply 
''the Elder." Wide as his influence must have 
been, there were some who withstood his authority 
and refused to further his enterprises. With his 
approval missionaries had gone out through Asia 
to extend the gospel among the Greek population. 
Some Christians had welcomed them hospitably 
and helped them on their way, but others who 
were hostile to the Elder had refused to receive 
them and had threatened any who did so with 
exclusion from the church. 
r In this situation the Elder writes two letters. 
One, known to us as Third John, is to a certain 
Gaius, to acknowledge his support and encourage 



io8 The Story of the New Testament 

him to continue it, and to warn him against the 
party of Diotrephes. Gains is probably the most 
influential of the Elder's friends and supporters in 
his own community, while Diotrephes is the leader 
of the party hostile to the Elder. The letter 
is probably delivered by Demetrius, one of the 
missionaries in question. At the same time the 
Elder writes another short letter, our Second John, 
to the church to which Gains belongs, urging its 
members to love one another and to Hve harmo- 
niously together, and warning them against the 
deceivers who teach that Christ has not come in 
the flesh. The advocates of this teaching they are 
to let severely alone, refusing them even the ordi- 
nary salutations and the hospitahty usual among 
Christians. The two letters are brief, for the 
Elder is coming to them very soon in person; but 
short as they are they bring us into the very heart 
of a controversy that was already dividing indi- 
vidual churches and threatening the peace of a 
whole district. 

As missionaries Hke Demetrius went about the 
province of Asia, under the Elder's direction, they 
took with them a longer letter from his pen iii 
which the same pressing matters were more fully 
presented. We have seen that the short letters 
are without his name, and the long letter bears 
not even his title. It hardly required it if it was 
to be carried by his messengers and read by them 



The Letters of John 109 

as from him in the assembled churches they visited. 
This longer letter, known to us as First John, deals ^ 
with the same question as Second^ohn, takes the 
same view of the matter, and puts it with the same 
confident authority. But the situation has devel- 
oped somewhat, for the Docetists, or some of them, 
have now left the church.^ 

The Elder begins with the most confident 
emphasis. His own experience guarantees the 
truth of his message, which he is sending in order 
that his readers may share the fellowship with 
God and Christ which he enjoys.^ The heart of >- 
that message is that God was historically mani- 
fested in the life of Christ, and that the Christian 
experience is fully sufficient for anyone's spiritual 
needs. To claim fellowship with God and live an 
evil life will not do; the claim is false. The Do- 
cetic pretension to sinlessness is mere deceit. The 
Christian way is to own one's sins and seek for- 
giveness. 

The claim of knowing Christ is meaningless 
apart from obedience to his commands. Living as -"^ 
he lived is the only evidence of union with him. 
Those who claim peculiar illumination and yet 
treat their brethren with exclusiveness and con- 
tempt show that they have never risen to a really 
Christian attitude. The Elder's reason for writing 
to his friends is that they have laid the foundation 
of a real Christian experience, and he would warn 



no The Story of the New Testament 

them against sinking again into a life of worldliness 
and sin. 

The breach with the Docetic thinkers, with 
their claims of freedom from sin, is complete. It 
is well that they have left the church, for they have 
no right to be in it. Those who deny that Jesus 
is the Christ are not Christians but antichrists. In 
opposition to their teachings, true Christians should 
continue to cultivate that spiritual experience upon 
which they have entered. They must abide in 
Christ and following the guidance of the Spirit 
./^seek, as children of a righteous heavenly father, to 
be righteous like him. Righteousness and love are 
the marks of the Christian Hfe. Jesus in laying 
down his life for us has shown what love may be. 

Some who urge the Docetic teaching claim that 
the Holy Spirit in their hearts has indorsed it. 
But the Spirit of God authorizes no such teaching. 
Only spirits that confess that Jesus Christ is come 
in the flesh are of God. Spirits that deny this are 
of the world. The Elder declares that he is of God, 
and that all who really know God will obey his 
solemn warning against these spirits of antichrist.^ 

Love is the perfect bond in all this great spiritual 
fellowship. Love is of God and God is love. He 
has shown it by sending his Son into the world to 
give us life. We love because he first loved us. If 
he so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 
Belief in Jesus as the Christ is the sign of sonship 



The Letters of John hi 

to God and the way to the life of love, since it 
is the manifestation in Jesus of God's love that 
kindles love in us. The messiahship of Jesus is evi- 
denced not only by the voice of the Spirit, but by 
his human Ufe and death. There are three who 
bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the 
blood. The witness is this, that God has given us 
eternal life and this life is in his Son. To have the 
life we must see in Jesus the Christ, the indispen- 
sable revelation of God. 

^_JJie Elder writes to confirm his readers in their 
assurance of eternal life. Sonship to God means 
the renunciation of sin. The Christian has an 
inward assurance that he belongs to God, whom 
Jesus has revealed. Here is the true God and 
eternal life. 

Except for a few touches which mark it very 
definitely as a letter (2:12-14), this Kttle work 
might pass for a sermon or homily. It is clearly a 
circular letter written to save the churches of Asia 
from the Docetic views which threatened them. 
The great words of the letter, life, light, love, figure 
importantly in the Fourth Gospel also, and in its 
meditative and yet epigrammatic style the letter 
resembles the Gospel. It has been said that 
while the Gospel argues that Jesus is the 
Christ, the letter contends that the Christ is Jesus, 
that is, the Messiah is identical with the historical 
Jesus. 



112 The Story of the New Testament 

Who was this Asian Elder who could so confi- 
dently instruct and command the churches of his 
countryside ? Early Christian writers mention an 
Elder John of Ephesus, who had been a personal 
follower of Jesus but was not the apostle of that 
name, and they sometimes refer to him simply as 
^'the Elder," just as the writer of these letters calls 
himself. There is no need to identify him with 
the prophet John of the Revelation. But to John 
the letters have always been ascribed, and we may 
think of the Elder John as sending them out from 
Ephesus, one to Gains, one to the church to which 
he belonged, and one to that and other churches, 
in full assurance that the Christian experience and 
belief in Jesus as the Christ would save them from 
the mistakes of Docetism. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^1 John 2 : 19; ^1 John i : 1-4; ^I John 4:6. 

2. Read Third John as an example of a personal Chris- 
tian letter. Compare it with Paul's letter to Philemon, the 
only other one of this kind preserved in the New Testament. 

3. Read Second John as an example of a letter to a 
church, analogous with Paul's letters to Thessalonica, 
Corinth, or Colossae. How does it compare with such 
letters of Paul ? 

4. Notice in First John the emphasis on behef in Christ, 
2:23; 3:23; 4:15; 5:10-13. How does this compare with 
the teaching of James ? Yet cf . 3 : 18. 

5. Notice the writer's attitude to the world as over 
against the church, 2:15-17; 3 : 13 ; 5:19. Is there anything 
like this in James ? 



The Letters of John 113 

6. Read First John, noting the spiritual claims made by 
the Docetists but denied by the writer, 1:6, 8, 10; 2:4, 9; 
4:20. 

7. Has the reference to antichrists in 2:18 anything to 
do with what Paul wrote of in Second Thessalonians, or 
is it merely an application of the weU-known name to the 
new and immediate foes of the church ? 

8. Does the "going out" of the Elder's opponents from 
the church, 2 : 19, mark the beginning of the rise of heretical 
bodies professing a modified Christianity not accepted by 
the church at large ? Consider whether the Nicolaitans of 
Rev. 2:6, 15 may have been such a Christian sect. 

9. What are the leading religious ideas of First John? 

10. Read 4:7-21, comparing it with Paul's chapter on 
love, I Cor., chap. 13. 

11. The letter begins with basing Christian confidence on 
Christian experience, i : 1-4. What is its closing emphasis, 
5:18-21? 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN 

Christianity and Judaism had parted company. 
The Christian movement, at first wholly Jewish, 
had after a Httle tolerated a few Greeks, then ad- 
mitted them in numbers, and at length found itself 
almost whoUy Greek. The Jewish wing of the 
church withered and disappeared. The Jews closed 
up their ranks and disowned the church. Church 
and s)magogue were at war. 

It was plain that the future of the Christian 
movement lay among the Greeks, the Gentiles. 
To them it must more than ever address itself. 
Its message must be made intelligible to them. 
But the forms in which it had always been put were 
Jewish. Jesus was the Messiah, the national deliv- 
erer whose coming was foretold by Jewish prophets, 
and who was destined to come again on the clouds 
of heaven in fulfilment of the messianic drama of 
Jewish apocalyptic. The church was addressing a 
Greek world in a Jewish vocabulary. Was there 
no universal language it could speak ? Was no one 
able to translate the gospel into imiversal terms ? 
The Gospel of John is the answer to this demand. 

Early in the second century a Christian leader 
of Ephesus, weU acquainted with the early Gospels 
114 



The Gospel According to John 115 

and deeply influenced by the letters of Paul, put 
forth a new interpretation of the spiritual signifi- 
cance of Jesus in terms of Greek thought. Paul 
had laid great emphasis upon faith in Jesus the 
risen Christ, glorified at God's right hand, and had 
attached little importance to knowing the historical 
Jesus in Palestine. His Ephesian follower finds in 
Paul's glorified Christ the divine ^'Word" of Stoic 
philosophy, and reads this lofty theological con- 
ception back into the earthly Hfe of Jesus. The 
faith Paul demanded becomes with him primarily 
an intellectual assent to the messiahship of Jesus 
thus understood, that is, to the revelation in the 
historical Jesus of that absolute divine will and 
wisdom toward which Greek philosophy had always 
been striving. 

The form in which this Christian theologian put 
his teaching was a gospel narrative. He did not 
intend it to supersede the familiar narratives of 
Matthew and Luke, but to correct, interpret, and 
supplement them. The new narrative differs from 
the older ones in many details. In it Jesus' ministry 
falls almost wholly in Judaea instead of Galilee, and 
seems to cover three years instead of one. The 
cleansing of the temple is placed at the beginning 
instead of at the end of his work. Nothing is 
said of Jesus' baptism, temptation, or agony in 
the garden. His human qualities disappear, and 
he moves through the successive scenes of the 



ii6 The Story of the New Testament 

Gospel, perfect master of every situation, until at 
the end he goes of his own accord to his crucifixion 
and death. He does not teach in parables, and his 
teaching deals not, as in the earlier Gospels, with 
the Kingdom of God, but with his own nature and 
with his inward relation to God. In his debates 
with the JeWs he defends his union with the Father, 
his pre-existence, and his sinlessness. He welcomes 
the interest shown by Greeks in his message, prays 
for the imity of the future church, and interprets 
the Lord's Supper even before he has established it. 
His cures and wonders, which in the earHer Gospels 
seem primarily the expression of his overflowing 
spirit of sympathy and helpfulness, now become 
signs or proofs to support his high claims. 

The long delay of the return of Jesus to the 
world had caused that hope which had been so 
strong at first to decline in confidence and power. 
The new evangelist at once acknowledges and ex- 
plains this by showing that the return of Jesus has 
already taken place in the coming of his spirit into 
the hearts of Christian behevers. He thus trans- 
forms the Jewish apocalyptic expectation into a 
spiritual experience.^ He foresees that under the 
guidance of this spirit the Christian consciousness 
will constantly grow into greater knowledge and 
power. 

Toward the close of his Gospel the writer states 
his purpose in writing it to be to give his readers 



The Gospel According to John 117 

faith in Jesus as the Christ, and thus to enable 
them to have life through his name.^ This idea of 
the life to be derived from Jesus is prominent in the 
whole Gospel. Christ is the source of life of a real 
and lasting kind, and it can only be obtained 
through mystic contact with him. This is because 
Jesus is the full revelation of God in human life. 
This doctrine, which we call the Incarnation, is 
fundamental in the Gospel of John: ''In the be- 
ginning was the Word and the Word was with God 
and the Word was God And the Word be- 
came flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his 

glory I am come that they may have life and 

that they may have it abundantly." 

While the Gospel of John contains no parables, 
in a sense it is a parable. It presents an inter- 
pretation of Jesus in the form of a narrative of his 
ministry. The writer feels that the Jewish title of 
Messiah does not express the full rehgious signifi- 
cance of Jesus, but by finding for it an expression 
in Greek philosophical terms he transplants Chris- 
tian thought and the Christian movement into 
Greek soil. It was easy for persons of Greek 
education to understand the claim that Jesus was 
the divine Logos, or Word, of the Stoic philoso- 
phers, and a gospel which began with such a claim 
would be likely to arrest their attention. The 
writer still thinks of Jesus as Messiah, and retains 
his respect for the Jewish scriptures. Indeed, the 



ii8 The Story of the New Testament 

idea of the revealing Word of Jehovah appears 
now and again in Jewish literature, and the Jewish 
philosopher Philo had already identified it with the 
Logos of Greek thought. This made it all the 
easier for the writer of the new Gospel to apply it 
to Jesus, but in this interpretation of Jesus as the 
divine Word he goes beyond previous Christian 
thinkers and takes a long and bold step in the 
development of Christian theology. 

The Gospel is the story of Jesus' gradual revela- 
tion of himself to his disciples and followers. The 
opening sentences present its main ideas in words 
intelligible and attractive to Greek minds. Over 
against the followers of John the Baptist, who still 
constituted a sect in the writer's day as they had 
in Paul's,^ the evangehst relates John's ready testi- 
mony to Jesus as the Son of God and Lamb of God. 
With a few followers, some of them directed to him by 
John, Jesus visits Cana and in the first of his "signs " 
indicates his power to transform human nature.'' 
After a brief stay in Capernaum he goes to Jerusa- 
lem to the Passover, and there clears the temple of 
the dealers in sacrificial birds and animals who 
with their trafl&c victimized the people and dis- 
turbed places meant for prayer. The Jews demand 
a sign in proof of his right to do this, and he answers 
with a prophecy of his resurrection. In a conversa- 
tion with Nicodemus, Jesus explains that a new 
birth of water and the Spirit, that is, baptism and 



The Gospel According to John 119 

spiritual illumination, must precede the new life of 
the Kingdom. Jesus comes near the place where 
John is baptizing and John gives fresh testimony 
to his superiority. To avoid overshadowing John, 
Jesus goes into Galilee,^ and on the way explains 
the water of life to a Samaritan woman and re- 
veals himself as the Messiah and the source of 
eternal life. In Galilee Jesus is favorably received 
and performs the second of the seven signs that 
pimctuate his earthly ministry. Soon another feast 
brings him to Jerusalem. There he heals an 
impotent man on the Sabbath and, in the discus- 
sions which ensue with the Jews, expounds his 
relation to God. Returning to Galilee, he feeds a 
great multitude by the Sea of Galilee and declares 
himself the bread of life, for everyone who beholds 
him and believes on him shall have eternal life. 
At the Feast of Tabernacles he is again in Jerusa- 
lem, teaching in the temple, although danger from 
the Jewish authorities threatens him. He declares 
that he is sent by God and offers his hearers the 
water of life, which the evangelist interprets to 
mean his Spirit, which was to be given to his fol- 
lowers after his resurrection. He proclaims himself 
the light of the world and when the Jews object 
claims the witness of God for his message. He 
promises truth and freedom to those who abide in 
his words, and declares his sinlessness and pre- 
existence. He restores a blind man's sight on the 



120 The Story of the New Testament 

Sabbath, and in the discussions that follow declares 
himself the Son of God and the Good Shepherd. 
Soon after at Bethany Jesus raises Lazarus from 
the dead and proclaims himself the Resurrection 
and the Life. The hostility of the Jewish rulers 
becomes so bitter that he conceals himself for a 
little while in Ephraim, but as the Passover 
approaches he goes up to Bethany. Enthusiastic 
crowds go out from Jerusalem to meet him and 
escort him in messianic state into the city. Greeks 
ask that they may meet him, and Jesus answers 
that he is now to be glorified but that it must be 
through his death. In his last hours with his dis- 
ciples he comforts them in preparation for his 
departure, and promises to send them his spirit to 
comfort and instruct them. Under the figure of 
the vine and the branches he teaches them the 
necessity of abiding in him, the source of Kfe. As 
he has come from the Father so now he must 
return to him. Finally, in an intercessory prayer, 
he asks God's protection for his disciples and the 
church they are to found. 

Leaving the city, he goes with his disciples to a 
garden on the Mount of OUves. There Judas 
brings a band to arrest him, but they are at first 
overawed by his dignity, and only after securing 
the freedom of his disciples does Jesus go with 
them.^ He is examined before the high priests and 
before Pilate, and on the charge that he claims to 



The Gospel According to John 121 

be the king of the Jews he is sentenced to be cruci- 
fied. The evangelist is careful to show that Jesus 
retains his sense of divine commission to the last 
and dies with the words, ^'It is finished," on his 
lips, and he bears solemn testimony to the piercing 
of his side and the undoubted reality of his death. 
These details were important for the correction of 
the Docetic idea that the divine spirit abandoned 
Jesus on the cross. The writer also indicates that 
Jesus was crucified on the day before the Passover, 
so that his sacrificial death fell on the day on which 
the Passover lamb was sacrificed. On this point he 
corrects the earlier gospel narratives. 

Early on the first day of the following week 
Jesus appears to Mary. The same evening he 
appears to the disciples, imparts his spirit to them, 
and commissions them to forgive sins. Eight days 
later he again appears to them when Thomas is 
with them and convinces Thomas of the reality of 
his resurrection. The Gospel closes with the evan- 
gelist's statement of his purpose in writing it: that 
his readers may believe that Jesus is the Christ, 
the Son of God, and that, believing, they may have 
life in his name. 

To the Gospel of John an appendix or epilogue 
was afterward added.' It reports an appearance 
of the risen Jesus by the Sea of Tiberias, or GaHlee, 
and his conversation on that occasion with Peter, 
in which he predicts Peter's death, but seems to 



122 The Story of the New Testament 

intimate that the beloved disciple may live until 
his own return. The Gospel never names this 
disciple, but by describing him several times in 
this way it makes him more conspicuous than any 
name could make him. The beloved disciple has 
perhaps died, for the epilogue explains that Jesus 
did not exactly say that the beloved disciple would 
survive until his coming. This epilogue may have 
been added to the Gospel to correct the popular 
misunderstanding about Jesus' words to Peter, and 
to claim the beloved disciple's authority and even 
authorship for the Gospel. There are indeed some 
points in the Gospel which seem to involve better 
information on the part of its writer than the earlier 
evangelists had. But the whole character of the 
narrative and its evident preference for the sym- 
boUc and theological, as compared with the merely 
historical, are against the assigning of its composi- 
tion to a personal follower of Jesus. It is very 
probable that it was written by that Elder of 
Ephesus who perhaps after the pubUcation of this 
Gospel wrote the three letters that bear the name 
of John. 

The Gospel of John was wholly successful in 
what it undertook. It was not at first generally 
welcomed by the churches, but in the course of half 
a century it came to be accepted side by side with 
the earlier Gospels, and in its influence upon Chris- 
tian thought it finally altogether surpassed them. 



The Gospel According to John 123 

Its great ideas of revelation, life, love, truth, and 
freedom, its doctrine of the spirit as ever guiding 
the Christian consciousness into larger vision and 
achievement, and its insistence upon Jesus as the 
supreme revelation of God and the source of 
spiritual life, have given it unique and perma- 
nent religious worth. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^John 14:3, 16-18, 23, 26, 28; 15:26; 
2 John 20:31; 3 Acts 19:1-7; 4 John 2:11; sjohn 4:1, 2; 
''John 18:8, 9; 7john, chap. 21. 

2. Read John i : 1-18, noting in the passage the leading 
ideas of the whole Gospel: revelation, incarnation, and 
Christ the source of life and light. 

3. Notice in 2: 13-16 that the cleansing of the temple is 
put early in Jesus' ministry. Where in his work do our other 
Gospels put it ? 

4. Count Jesus' visits to Jerusalem in John and the 
number of Passover feasts mentioned in the course of Jesus' 
ministry, 2 : 13 ; 5:1; 6:4; 7:2,10; 10:22,23; 12:1,12. 

5. How long a ministry does this imply? How many 
passovers and visits to Jerusalem does Mark record ? 

6. Note the seven signs wrought by Jesus before his 
crucifixion, 2:11; 4:54; 5:9; 6:11; 6:19; 9:7; 11:43,44. 
Cf. 20:30. 

7. Why does the evangelist record these signs and how 
does he interpret them ? Cf . 20:31. 

8. Are the discourses in John mainly ethical, like the 
Sermon on the Mount; eschatological, like Mark, chap. 13; 
theological; or apologetic, that is, in defense of the pre- 
existence, messiahship, or authority of Jesus ? 



124 The Story of the New Testament 

9. With all its emphasis upon behef (20:31), note the 
other, mystical, side of the Gospel's teaching, 15: 1-19. Do 
you see any resemblance here to First John ? 

10. Notice that the writer speaks frequently of "the 
Jews" as over against Jesus and his followers, though these 
latter were Jews too in the period of Jesus' ministry. Con- 
sider whether this suggests that he wrote at a time when 
the Christians and the Jews were sharply distinguished. 

11. Someone has said that there are a hundred quota- 
tions from Matthew, ^Mark, and Luke in the Gospel of John. 
Can you find any such ? 

12. Mark 14: 12-17 puts the Last Supper on the day on 
which the Passover lamb was sacrificed. Are John 13:1; 
18:28; 19:14, meant to correct this? 

13. Is the writer's conception of Christ more like Paul's 
or Mark's ? 

14. Is his idea of Jesus' return to the earth like Paul's ? 

15. What is the religious value of the Gospel of John? 



CHAPTER XVIII 
THE LETTERS TO TIMOTHY AND TO TITUS 

The first Christians were too absorbed in the 
expectation of Jesus' speedy return to the earth 
to give much thought to practical detail. They 
cared nothing about developing a literature, a 
theology, or an organization. The Lord was 
at hand.^ The time was short. ^ Why should 
people marry or slaves seek to be freed? At 
any moment the present order might come to 
an end. 

But time wore on and nothing happened. The 
first leaders passed away, but the churches con- 
tinued their work. It began to be clear that the 
end was not to come as speedily as men had thought, 
and that the churches might have to go on under 
the existing order for a long time. Christian lead- 
ers began to see that the practical side of church 
life could no longer be neglected. Spiritual en- 
thusiasm and well-meaning devotion were no longer 
enough. Efficiency must be insured. Church life 
must be regulated. Church officers must be prop- 
erly qualified. The several classes of people in the 
churches must be shown their several spheres and 
functions and kept to them. Efficiency must come 
through organization. 

I2S 



126 The Story of the New Testament 

Such a state of things, it is true, seems a serious 
decHne from the high, confident, spiritual enthu- 
siasm of the apostoHc age. But after the prophet 
must come the priest, to conserve and codify the 
other's work. And this was what the letters to 
Timothy and to Titus sought to do. 

Many churches needed to be shown what officers 
they ought to have to carry on their work and what 
kind of men these ought to be. Marriage, it was 
now evident, ought to be encouraged and sanctioned. 
The charitable work of the churches must be wisely 
directed and protected from abuse. The morals 
of the Christian communities needed definite cor- 
rection. Christian leaders needed to be reminded 
that they must set a worthy example of conduct 
and character. The homely practical lessons which 
need to be taught so often had to be put before the 
widest possible circle of churches in compact and 
telling form. 

In these letters Christians are taught to pray 
for kings and rulers and for all men. Perhaps the 
empire has not yet shown its hostile attitude to the 
church. Yet First Peter, written in the midst of 
persecution, bids Christians honor the emperor.^ 
Certainly the Book of Revelation takes a very dif- 
ferent attitude toward kings. Prayer is to be 
offered by men. Women are not to teach, but to 
occupy a subordinate place in the church life. Each 
church may have as officers a presiding officer, the 



The Letters to Timothy and to Titus 127 

bishop or elder, and his assistants, the deacons. 
These should be men of good repute and blame- 
less character, who have married but once. A 
recent convert should not be made a bishop, and 
only men who have proved their faithfulness in 
the church life should be appointed deacons. 

That practical helpfulness which had character- 
ized the churches from the first finds natural 
expression in providing for the support of destitute 
widows in the Christian community. This matter 
needs to be safeguarded against abuse. It is right 
that children or grandchildren who are able to do 
so should provide for their widowed mothers or 
grandmothers. Only widows past middle Kfe and 
without any kindred able to provide for them are 
to become the permanent pensioners of the church. 

Novel religious speculations remote from prac- 
tical life are to be discouraged and avoided. Some 
teachers have declared that the resurrection has 
already taken place; an idea perhaps due to a 
misunderstanding of Paul's teaching that conver- 
sion and baptism usher the believer, risen with 
Christ, into a new and blessed life. Such innova- 
tions are to be sternly condemned. 

It was the coming in of these new currents of 
teaching that most perplexed Christian leaders 
toward the end of the first century. How were they 
to be met and controlled ? They sometimes seemed 
to threaten the life of the churches. To whom, 



128 The Story of the New Testament 

when the first great leaders of Paul's generation 
were gone, could their less gifted successors appeal 
in matters of conscience and faith ? This is one of 
the questions these epistles to Christian ministers 
undertake to answer. It is not easy to realize how 
far early Christian thought, on a great many mat- 
ters, was from being definite and specific. The 
words of Jesus all recognized as authoritative, and 
also the voice of his Spirit in their own hearts. 
But one Christian might put forth views widely 
different from another's and claim for them the 
authority of the Spirit. Which was right ? Who 
was to decide? 

In the midst of this rising confusion of belief 
and teaching the churches fell back upon the let- 
ters of Paul. New teachings that conflicted with 
his must be false. In addition to Paul's letters 
and the memory of his teaching there was also 
what we call the Old Testament. Jesus had dis- 
owned various parts of it, and Paul had denied the 
rehgious efficacy of the Law, but Christian leaders 
felt safer in following them in their indorsement 
of the Jewish scriptures than in their partial re- 
jection of them, and very definitely added the Old 
Testament to their new authorities. We have 
evidence of this tendency in the Gospels of Mat- 
thew and John, but it is Second Timothy that 
first puts it decisively and unequivocally. Every 
scripture inspired of God, it was now felt, was 



The Letters to Timothy and to Titus 129 

profitable for teaching, reproof, and instruction. 
The church had adopted the Old Testament."* 

With the words of Jesus, a few letters of Paul, 
and the Jewish scriptures at their backs, the Chris- 
tians could now feel in a measure prepared to test 
new religious teachings which original spirits in 
their own community or Christian visitors from 
distant churches might set forth in the local meet- 
ings. The new teaching had to square with the 
old apostolic teaching. If it conflicted with that, 
it could not stand. It must be possible also to 
harmonize it with the Old Testament. That Paul 
and Jesus did not always conform to the Old Testa- 
ment did not at once appear nor greatly matter. 
What was needed was authorities, and with Jesus, 
Paul, and the Hterature of the Old Testament the 
need was satisfied. 

That the letters to Timothy and Titus claim 
Paul as their author may be due to the fact that 
short genuine letters of his were made the basis of 
them by some later follower of Paul who composed 
them. At any rate, the writer felt justified in claim- 
ing Paul's authority for what he thought a neces- 
sary and timely supplement to the letters Paul had 
left behind, and doubtless thought he was doing 
just what Paul would have done had he Hved to 
see the conditions the writer saw. But the value 
of these letters lay in the practical direction they 
gave the churches of their time, showing them how 



130 The Story of the New Testament 

to readjust their high hopes of Jesus' return and 
to set themselves to the task of estabHshing and 
perpetuating their work. In these Httle letters we 
see the church after the lofty enthusiasm of its 
first great experience settling down to the common 
life of the common day and grappling with its age- 
long task. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^Plul. 4:5; ^1 Cor. 7:29; ^i Pet. 2:17; 
411 Tim. 3: 16. 

2. Notice that First Timothy is a letter of instruction 
to a Christian pastor or minister, 4:6, and that his pubKc 
functions are reading, exhortation, and teaching, 4:13. 
What would he read in church ? Cf. II Tim. 3:15, 16. 

3. Read I Tim. 3:1-13, noticing the church officers 
mentioned and the qualifications they ought to have. What 
is the chief emphasis in these ? 

4. Note the writer's somewhat indiscriminate condem- 
nation of the advocates of a different t5T)e of Christian 
teaching, I Tim. 4:1-3; II Tim. 3:1-9; Titus 1:10-16. 
Does he give a clear picture of their teachings ? 

5. Notice the writer's indorsement of marriage, I Tim. 
3:2,12; 4:1-3; Titus 1:6. 

6. Observe the writer's rule as to women teachers, I 
Tim. 2:11, 12. Cf. Acts 18:26. 

7. What is meant in these letters by "faith" ? Is it an 
inward attitude of trust and dependence upon God or a 
deposit of truth to be guarded and preserved ? 

8. In what does the Christian life consist, according to 
these letters ? 

9. Do any of Paul's great characteristic ideas appear in 
these letters ? 



\ 



The Letters to Timothy and to Titus 131 

10. Is II Tim. 4:6-8, which we may call Paul's epitaph, 
any less appropriate or significant, considered as an early 
Christian's estimate of Paul, than when viewed as Paul's 
own commendation of himself ? 

11. What would be the immediate practical value of 
these letters to the scattered pastors and ministers of the 
early churches ? 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE EPISTLE OF JUDE AND THE SECOND 
^ EPISTLE OF PETER 

Many ancient thinkers conceived of the supreme 
God as far removed from the material world and 
too pure to have anything directly to do with it. 
The necessary connection between God and the 
world, they thought, was made through a series of 
intermediate ideas, influences, or beings, to one of 
which they ascribed the creation and supervision 
of the material world. When people with these 
views became Christians, they brought most of 
their philosophical ideas with them into the church 
and combined them as far as they could with their 
new Christian faith. 

In this way there came to be many Christians 
who held that the God of this world could not be 
the supreme God whom Jesus called his Father. 
Their view of Jesus himself seemed to most Chris- 
tians a denial of him, for they held to the Docetic 
idea that the divine Spirit left him before his death. 
They accordingly saw Httle religious meaning in 
his death, but they considered themselves so spirit- 
ual that they did not feel the need of an atonement. 
In fact, they felt so secure in their spirituaHty that 
they thought it did not much matter what they 
132 



JuDE AND Second Peter 133 

did in the flesh, and so they permitted themselves 
without scruple all sorts of indulgence. 

Such people could not help being a scandal in 
the churches, and a Christian teacher named Jude 
made them the object of a letter of unsparing con- 
demnation. He had been on the point of writing 
for some Christian friends of his a discourse on 
their common salvation when word reached him 
that such persons had appeared among them. He 
immediately sent his friends a short vehement let- 
ter condemning the immoral practices of these 
people, predicting their destruction, and warning 
his readers against their influence. He quotes 
against them with the greatest confidence passages 
from the Book of Enoch^ and the Assumption of 
Moses ,^ late Jewish writings which he seems to 
regard as scripture. The persons he attacks still 
belong to Christian churches and attend Christian 
meetings. He does not tell his readers to exclude 
them from their fellowship but to have pity on 
them and to try to save them, only taking care 
not to become infected with their faults. 

Who this Jude was we cannot tell. He looks 
back upon the age of the apostles, asking his 
readers to recollect how they have foretold that 
as time draws on toward the end scoffers will 
appear. He probably wrote early in the second 
century. The words ''the brother of James" were 
probably added to his name by some later copier 



134 The Story of the New Testament 

of his letter who took the writer to be the Judas 
or Jude mentioned in Mark 6:3 and Matt. 13:55 
as a brother of James and Jesus. 

A generation after this vigorous letter was 
written it was taken over almost word for word 
into what we know as Second Peter. In the early- 
part of the second century various books were 
written in Christian circles about the apostle Peter, 
or even in his name, until one could have collected 
a whole New Testament bearing his name. There 
were a Gospel of Peter, Acts of Peter, the Teaching 
of Peter, the Preaching of Peter, the Epistles of 
Peter, and the Revelation of Peter. Most of these 
laid claim to being from the pen of Peter himself. 

The one that most insistently claims Peter as its 
author is our Second Peter. It comes out of a time 
when Christians were seriously doubting the second 
coming of Jesus. A hundred years perhaps had 
passed since Jesus' ministry, and men were saying, 
"Where is his promised coming? For from the 
day the fathers feU asleep aU things continue as 
they were from the beginning of creation." The 
spiritualizing of the second coming which the Gos- 
pel of John wrought out did not commend itself to 
the writer of Second Peter, if he was acquainted 
with it. He prefers to meet the skepticism of his 
day about the second coming with a sturdy insist- 
ence on the old doctrine. In support of it he appeals 
to the Transfiguration, which he seems to know 



JuDE AND Second Peter 135 

from the Gospel of Matthew,^ and to the wide- 
spread ancient belief that the universe is to be 
destroyed by fire."* He repeats the denunciation 
which Jude hurled at the gnostic libertines of his 
day, only it is now directed against those who are 
giving up the expectation of the second coming. 
Jude has some hope of correcting and saving the 
persons he condemned, but the writer of Second 
Peter has no hope about those whom he attacks. 
He supports his exhortations by an appeal to the 
letters of Paul.^ He evidently knows a number of 
them, for he speaks of ^'all his letters.'' He con- 
siders them scripture, and says that many misin- 
terpret them, to their own spiritual ruin. This 
view of the letters of Paul, combined with the use 
in Second Peter of other New Testament books, 
proves it to be the latest book in the New Testa- 
ment. It was not addressed to any one church or 
district, but was published as a tract or pamphlet, 
to correct the growing disbelief in the second 
coming of Jesus; and to enforce his message its 
writer put it forth, as other men of his time were 
putting forth theirs, under the great name of Peter. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^ Jude, vss. 14, 15; ^Jude, vs. 9; ^ II Pet. 
1:16-18; 411 Pet. 3:10; sllPet. 3:15, 16. 

2. Note the picture drawn in Jude of the errorists under 
discussion, vss. 4, 8, 10, 12, 16, 18, 19, and the writer's 
unsparing denimciation of them. 



136 The Story of the New Testament 

3. Compare Jude, vss. 4-18, with II Pet. 2:1 — ^:^, 
noting the close resemblance. 

4. Notice the quotations from late Jewish writings: 
from the Assumption of Moses in Jude, vs. 9, and from the 
Book of Enoch in Jude, vss. 14, 15. Does the writer regard 
these books as scripture ? 

5. Notice the vagueness of the address of Jude. To 
whom is it addressed or dedicated ? 

6; Doe Second Peter seem from its salutation, 1:1, 
to have been sent as a letter or published as a tract or 
pamphlet ? 

7. Notice in Second Peter the references to Jesus' pre- 
diction of Peter's death, 1:14 (cf. John 21:18, 19); to the 
Transfiguration, 1:17, 18, most resembling Matt. 17:5; to 
I Pet. (3:1), and to the letters of Paul, 3:15, 16. 

8. What do these last verses imply as to the collection 
of Paul's letters, the esteem in which they were held, and 
the sectarian use being made of them in some quarters at 
the time when Second Peter was written ? 

9. Observe in II Pet. 3:$, 4 the writer's condemnation 
of those who have given up the expectation of the return of 
Jesus. 

10. Notice the support the writer finds for his views in 
the Stoic doctrine that the material universe would ulti- 
mately be destroyed by fire, 3:10. 

11. Compare the first clause of 3:10 with one in the 
earHest book in the New Testament, I Thess. 5:2. Is this a 
quotation — the writer of Second Peter knows some letters 
of Paul (cf. 3 : 15) — or a coincidence ? 



CHAPTER XX 

THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 

When the latest book of the New Testament 
had been written, there was still no New Testa- 
ment. Its books had to be collected and credited 
with a peculiar authority before the New Testa- 
ment could be said to exist. What led to this 
collection and estimate ? 

For the first Christians the chief authority was 
Jesus. What he had taught they accepted as true 
and binding. Believing that his spirit still spoke 
in their own hearts, they ascribed the same author- 
ity to its inward directions.^ Men who possessed 
this spirit in an especial measure, the Christian 
prophets, sometimes wrote down their revelations, 
and these came naturally to have the authority of 
scripture, that is, the authority which the Christian 
believers attached to the writings of the Old Testa- 
ment. Jesus' teaching was at first handed down 
in the form of tradition; new converts learned it 
from those who were already Christians, and in 
turn taught it by word of mouth to those who 
became beHevers later.^ But when gospels were 
written these began to take the place of this oral 
handing down, or tradition, of Jesus' words, and 
soon the gospel writing, and not simply the sayings 

137 



138 The Story or the New Testament 

of Jesus that it contained, came to be regarded 
as the authority. Authority thus gradually and 
naturally passed from the words of Jesus, and the 
thoughts of behevers endowed with his spirit, to 
books embodying these. 

Almost from the beginning, too, Christians had 
held Jesus' apostles in high esteem. Jesus had 
committed the continuation of his work to them. 
Paul, though not one of the Twelve, had by his 
zeal, devotion, and missionary success, convinced 
the churches that he too was in a real sense an 
apostle. His martyrdom gave added weight to the 
teachings he had left behind in his letters, and 
these came to be considered as Christian authori- 
ties of equal rank with gospels and revelations. 
Through the informal interchange of copies these 
books spread from church to church and came 
gradually to be read in the various churches in 
their meetings, along with the books of the Old 
Testament. 

In the early years of the second century gifted 
but erratic Christian teachers began to divide the 
scattered and unorganized churches into parties 
or sects. Other Christian teachers, fearful of these 
schismatic tendencies, opposed these novel views 
and insisted upon what they considered the true 
and original Christian belief. In these contro- 
versies with heretics, that is, sectarians or schis- 
matics, Christians in general more and more 



The Making of the New Testament 139 

appealed in support of their views to the books and 
letters which had come down to them from earlier 
times and which they believed presented Chris- 
tianity in its true and abiding form. In this way 
greater emphasis came to be laid upon the letters 
of Paul, the Gospels, and the Revelation. 

The first step toward collecting early Christian 
writings of which we have any definite knowledge 
was taken strangely enough by one of these sec- 
tarian leaders, a certain Marcion, of Pontus in 
Asia Minor. He was a well-to-do ship-owner of 
Sinope. He had become convinced that the God 
of the Old Testament could not be identified with 
the loving heavenly Father whom Jesus proclaimed, 
and so he rejected the Old Testament. Something 
had of course to be put in its place for purposes of 
Christian worship and devotion, and Marcion pro- 
posed a Christian collection, consisting of the Gos- 
pel of Luke and ten letters of Paul. He did not 
include in this list the letters to Timothy and Titus. 
He accompanied his list with a work of his own 
called the Antitheses, in which he sought to show 
that the God of the Jewish scriptures could not be 
the God revealed in Jesus. The wide influence of 
Marcion must have done much to promote the 
circulation of the letters of Paul, whose interpreta- 
tion of Christianity he regarded with especial favor. 

About the same time Christian teachers in Asia 
put forth the Four Gospels together, perhaps in 



140 The Story of the New Testament 

order to increase the influence of the Gospel of 
John, which Christians attached to the Hfelong use 
of Matthew or Luke might find easier of acceptance 
if it were circulated along with the Gospel to which 
they were accustomed. But it is not imtil about 
185 A. D. that we find anything like our New Testa- 
ment in use among Christians. By that time a 
great effort had been made by leading Christians of 
the non-sectarian type — ^who regarded their form 
of teaching as apostoHc — to unite the individual 
churches of East and West into one great body, to 
resist the encroachments of the sects. The basis 
of this union was the acceptance by the churches of 
the Apostles' Creed, episcopal organization, and a 
body of Christian scriptures, substantially equiva- 
lent to our New Testament. In this way the 
Catholic, that is, the general or universal, church 
began. 

The New Testament, as it soon came to be called, 
did not displace the Jewish scriptures in the esteem 
of the church, as Marcion had meant his collection 
to do. It stood beside the Old Testament, but a 
little above it, for the Old Testament had now to 
be interpreted in the light of the New. The books 
included in the New Testament were appealed to 
in debate with schismatics as trustworthy rec- 
ords of apostolic behef and practice. They served 
an even more important purpose in being read from 
week to week, in the public meetings of the 



{ 



The Making of the New Testament 141 

churches, along with the Old Testament scriptures. 
The Jewish idea that every part of the Old Testa- 
ment must have an edifying meaning was definitely 
accepted by early Christians, and was now applied 
by them to the New Testament as well. This 
obliged them, as it had the Jews, to interpret their 
sacred books allegorically, and so the historical 
meaning of the New Testament books was neg- 
lected and obscured, and finally actually forgotten. 
As to what should be included in this library of 
preferred and authoritative Christian writings, 
there was agreement among the churches in regard 
to general outlines, but no little diversity of views 
as to details. All accepted the Four Gospels so 
familiar to us, and thirteen letters of Paul, includ- 
ing those to Timothy and Titus. The Acts of the 
Apostles and three or four epistles, one of Peter, 
one or two of John, ^ and that of Jude, were also 
generally accepted. Eastern churches, especially 
that at Alexandria, holding Hebrews to be the 
work of Paul, put it into their New Testament, but 
it was nearly two hundred years before Rome and 
the western churches admitted this. The West, 
on the other hand, accepted the Revelation of 
John as early as the middle of the second century, 
but the East never fully recognized its right to a 
place in the New Testament. The lesser epistles 
of John, Peter, and James were variously treated, 
some accepting them and others refusing to do so. 



142 The Story of the New Testament 

The Syrian church never accepted them all, but in 
Alexandria and in the West they became at length 
established as parts of the New Testament, mainly 
on the strength of their supposed apostolic author- 
ship. 

Other books now almost forgotten found places 
in the New Testament in the third and fourth 
centuries. One of the oldest Greek manuscripts 
of the New Testament includes the so-called let- 
ters of Clement of Rome, one a letter from the 
Roman church to that at Corinth, written about 
the end of the first century, the other a sermon 
sent seventy years later from Rome to Corinth. 
Another of these manuscripts contains the Shep- 
herd, a revelation written by a Roman prophet 
named Hennas, toward the middle of the second 
century, to bring the Roman church and other 
Christians to genuine and lasting repentance. The 
so-called Epistle of Barnabas, a curious work of 
a slightly earlier time, is also included in this old 
manuscript. These oldest extant copies of the 
New Testament were made in the fourth and fifth 
centuries, probably for church use, and show what 
books were considered scripture in those times in 
the places where these manuscripts were written. 

The Hst of New Testament books that we know, 
that is, just the twenty-seven we find in our New 
Testament today, and no others, first appears in a 
letter written by Athanasius of Alexandria at Eas- 



The Making of the New Testament 143 

ter in 367 a.d. But long after that time there 
continued to be some disagreement in different 
places and among different Christian teachers as 
to just what books were entitled to be considered 
the inspired and authoritative Christian writings. 
This was somewhat less felt than it would be now, 
because the books of the New Testament were not 
often all included in a single manuscript. People 
would have one manuscript containing the Gospels, 
another containing Paul's letters, a third contain- 
ing the Acts and the general epistles — ^James, Peter, 
John, Jude — and perhaps a fourth, containing the 
Revelation. It was only when printing was in- 
vented that the whole New Testament began to 
be generally circulated in one volume, in Latin, 
Greek, German, or English. 

The value of the New Testament to the Chris- 
tian church has of course been immeasurably great. 
To begin with, the formation of the collection in- 
sured the preservation and the lasting influence 
upon Christian character of the best of the earhest 
works of Christian instruction and devotion. While 
the purpose of the makers of the New Testament 
was not historical, they nevertheless did a great 
service for Christian history. But the idea of es- 
tablishing a list of Christian writings which should 
be exclusively authoritative, put fetters upon the 
free Christian spirit which could not always re- 
main. Indeed, the New Testament itself included 



144 The Story of the New Testament 

in Galatians the strongest possible assertion of 
that freedom, and so carried within itself the cor- 
rective of the construction which Catholic Chris- 
tianity put upon it. But though Christians in 
increasing numbers may no longer attach to it 
the dogmatic values of the past, they will never 
cease to prize it for its inspiring and purifjdng 
power, and for its simple and moving story of the 
ministry of Jesus. Historically understood, the 
New Testament will still kindle in us the spirit 
which animated the men who wrote it, who aspired 
to be not the lords of our faith but the helpers of 
our joy. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

1. References: ^I Cor. 7:40; 14:37; ^I Cor. 11:2, 23; 

15:3. 

2. How did Paul, Mark, and Luke regard the sajdngs 
of Jesus? Cf. I Cor. 11:24, 25; Acts 20:35. 

3. Did Paul believe that he had the authority of the 
Holy Spirit for some of his teachings? Cf. I Cor. 7:40; 

14:37- 

4. Did he think himself alone in this? Cf. 2:16; 7:40. 

5. What did Paul think of an external written standard 
for the inner life ? Cf . II Cor. 3 : 6. 

6. Did the earliest Christians find their religious author- 
ity without, in books or laws, or within, in their spiritual 
intuitions ? 

7. Did the writer of the Gospel of Matthew think Mark 
too perfect to be freely revised ? 

8. Did Luke regard his sources, including Mark, as in- 
spired or infallible ? Cf . Luke i : 1-4. 



The Making of the New Testament 145 

9. How does the writer of Second Peter regard Paxil's 
letters? Cf. 3:15, 16. 

10. Note the classing of prophets and apostles together 
in Eph. 2 : 20; 3 : 5, and in Rev. 18 : 20. 

11. Read Rev. 21 : 14, noting the high esteem in which a 
Christian prophet holds the apostles. 

12. Note the full acknowledgment of the Jewish scrip- 
tures as inspired in II Tim. 3 : 16, 17. 

13. What book of the New Testament claims to be 
inspired ? 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

GENERAL 

Burton, E. D. Handbook of the Life of Paul. Chicago: 
The University of Chicago Press, 1904. $0.50. 

Brief introductions to the letters of Paul and helpful 
analyses of their contents. 

Burton, E. D. Short Introduction to the Gospels. Chicago: 
The University of Chicago Press, 1904. $1.00. 

A presentation of the main facts about the purpose and 
attitude of each Gospel necessary for reading it intelligently. 
There are full analyses of the Gospels and a chapter on the 
synoptic problem, that is, the relation of the Synoptic 
Gospels to one another. 

Wrede, W. The Origin of the New Testament. New York: 
Harper, 1909. $0.75. 

Four popular lectures on the origin of the books of the 
New Testament and of the New Testament itself, by a 
very able German scholar. 

SODEN, H. VON The History of Early Christian Literature: 
The Writings of the New Testament. New York: 
Putnam, 1906. Si. 50. 
A fuller treatment along the same lines. 

Peake, a. S. a Critical Introduction to the New Testament. 
New York: Scribner, 1911. $0.75. 

Good, compact introductions to the several books, with 
especial reference to recent opinion and discussion, which 
are clearly smnmarized and criticized. 

Bacon, B. W. Introduction to the New Testament. New 
York: Macmillan, 1900. $1.00 
146 



Bibliography 147 

Bacon, B. W. The Making of the New Testament. New 
York: Henry Holt, 191 2. $0.50. 
These books cover the Hterature of the New Testament, 
the first book by book, the second in a more popular and 
continuous historical way. 

McGiFFERT, A. C. The Apostolic Age. New York: Scrib- 
ner, 1910. $2.50. 

Chaps, iv-vi deal fully and helpfully with the books 
of the New Testament in their relation to the history of 
early Christianity and the development of Christian thought. 

Encyclopaedia Britannica, nth ed., 1912. 
Valuable articles on the several books. 

Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible. New York: Scribner, 
1909. I vol. $5.00. 
Good short articles on the several books. 



SPECIAL 

Bacon, B . W. Galatians. (The Bible for Home and School.) 
New York: Macmillan, 1909. $0.50. 

A short popular commentary with a good introduction 
and an analysis of the letter. 

Massie, John. Corinthians. (New) Century Bible. New 
York: Frowde, 1902. $0.90. 
A good short commentary for popular use. 

Gilbert, G. H. Acts. (The Bible for Home and School.) 
New York: Macmillan, 1908. $0.75. 
An excellent short commentary for the general reader. 

Harnack, A. The Acts of the Apostles. New York: Put- 
nam, 1909. $1.75. 
The introduction to this volume will serve admirably to 
put the reader into the atmosphere of the Acts. 



148 The Story of the New Testament 

Porter, F. C. Messages of the Apocalyptic Writers. New 
York: Scribner, 1905. $1.25. 

A popular treatment of the Revelation showing its his- 
torical situation and its relations with kindred Jewish lit- 
erature. 

GooDSPEED, E. J. Hebrews. (The Bible for Home and 
School.) New York: Macmillan, 1908. $0.50. 

A concise commentary for popular use, with a some- 
what full introduction on the occasion, purpose, and date 
of the letter. 

Scott, E. F. The Historical and Religious Value of the 
Fourth Gospel. (Modern ReUgious Problems.) Boston: 
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909. $0.50. 

An admirable sketch, for the general reader, of the pur- 
pose, ideas, and worth of the Gospel of John. 



INDEX 



Abraham, 8, ii, 57, 64. 

Acts, 70. 

Adam, 64. 

Allegorical interpretation, 90. 

Angel- worship, 42. 

Antioch, Pisidian, 8. 

Antioch, Syrian, 9, 50. 

Apollos, 14. 

Apostles, 9, 20. 

Ascetic practices, 44. 

Barnabas, 50. 
Barnabas, Epistle of, 142. 
Beroea, 2. 

Caesarea, 2. 

Christianity condemned by 

the Empire, 95. 
Church officers, 126. 
Circmncision, 9. 
Clement of Rome, 142. 
Collection for the poor, 25, 29. 
Colossae, 41, 42, 43, 47, 
Colossians, 41. 
Corinth, i, 3, 4, 9, 14, 15, 16, 

20, 33. 

I Corinthians, 14. 

II Corinthians, 20. 
Cyprus, I, so. 

David, 58, 64. 
Day of the Lord, 5. 
Demetrius, 108. 
Derbe, 8. 



Diotrephes, 108. 
Domitian, 76, 87. 
Docetists, 106, 109, no, in, 
121, 132. 

Emperor worship, 76. 
Enoch, Book of, 133. 
Epaphras, 42, 43, 45. 
Epaphroditus, 36, 37, 39. 
Ephesians, 46. 
Ephesus, 14, 21, 23, 83, 114. 
Epictetus, 105. 

Four Gospels, 61, 139, 141. 
Freedom, n. 

Gains, 107. 
Galatia, 8, 10. 
Galatians, 8. 
Greek Mission, 70, 71. 

Hebrews, 85. 
Herod, 67, 75. 

Iconium, 8. 

Imprisonment of Paul, 35, 38. 

Incarnation, 117. 

James, 100, loi. 

Jerusalem, 14, 29, 30, 50, 66; 

faU of, 56. 
Jesus, I, 3, 9, and often. 
Jewish Christian teachers, 8, 

10. 
Jewish scriptures accepted, 128. 



149 



150 The Story of the New Testament 



John, Gospel of, 1 14. 
John, Letters of, 106. 
John the Elder, 112, 122. 
John the prophet, 79. 
Jude, 132. 

Kingdom of God, 51, 53, 58, 66, 

67, 81. 
Kingdom of Heaven, 58. 

Laodicea, 42, 45, 47. 
Lord's Supper, 15, 16, 17. 
Luke, 64, 68, 71. 
Luke, Gospel of, 63. 
Lystra, 8. 

Marcion, 139. 
Mark, 49, 50, 51. 
Mark, Gospel of, 49. 
Matthew, 57. 
Matthew, Gospel of, 55. 

Nero's persecution, 76, 85, 86. 
New Testament, 140. 

Onesimus, 41, 43, 47. 
Organization, 125. 

Parables, 66, 67, 117. 
Paul, I, 2, 3, and often. 
Peter, 14, 49, 50, 51. 

I Peter, 95. 

II Peter, 132. 
Peter literature, 134. 
Pharisees and Sadducees, 67. 



Philemon, 41, 42, 43, 47. 
Philemon, Letter to, 41. 
PhiUppi, 2, 3, 35. 
PhiHppians, 35. 
Phoebe, 33, 34. 
Pilate, 67, 75. 
Pliny, 98. 
Position of women, 126. 

Return of Jesus, 4. 
Revelation of John, 83, 126, 

141. 
Righteousness, 31, 58. 
Romans, 28. 
Rome, 2, 28, 29, 31, 41, 49, 85. 

Samaritan, 68, 119. 
Sermons, ancient, 100. 
Sermon on the Mount, 58. 
Shepherd of Hermas, 142. 
Silvanus, 3. 
Spain, 28, 29, 30. 

Tertius, 12. 
TheophHus, 64. 
Thessalonians, i. 
Thessalonica, i, 2, 5. 
Timothy, 3, 92. 
Timothy, Letters to, 126. 
Titus, 12, 23, 24, 25. 
Titus, Letter to, 126. 
Tychicus, 44, 47. 

"Word," 115. 



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